I’m a huge iSight fan, and I’ve converted three other family members (though it wasn’t hard). The more challenging video chat issue remains going between my Mac and my mother’s Windows machine. The camera doesn’t appear to be the problem, but so far we haven’t succeeded in getting video and audio. That’s trying AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) and Yahoo Messenger. The latter doesn’t work well (for video) on the Mac, although I’m generally a fan of YM (for anything but video).
Jason Levine has the same problem, and hasn’t found the perfect answer, although there are some suggestions in “QDN: Macs and PCs warily eye each other over the ‘net.” In the comments, SightSpeed gets a recommendation or two.
I don’t like a product, though, where the prominent Download button takes me straight to a page that asks me to register, and doesn’t give any other information. Not expected, and I’m still not clear on whether this is free or not.
Poking around a bit more, I see that it’s free for what I want, video calls. After reading a bit more of the FAQ, I proceeded with the (free) Sign Up, and downloaded the software. The confirmation email ended up in my Junk folder, but I pulled it out of there. I’ve invited my mother, despite the spelling error on the invite page (use separate instead of seperate… these tiny details matter).
Install was smooth and easy… I just hope iChat and SightSpeed don’t have camera contention when the time comes. We’ll see.