Oh! The joys of skype.

With the imminent emigration of two of my three children, one to Canada, the other to America we have been setting up skype this evening.

My son who still lives at home until departure has dealt with most of my computer needs, so I'm now being given a crash course on skype amongst other things. Have we had fun setting it up! At the same time trying to involve my younger daughter (also going) in a three way link up. So two computers in one house and another elsewhere we've had all sorts of hysterical problems between us.
Break down in link ups, one off one on, the other lingering somewhere in the atmosphere, mainly me and then problems with mic's, my computer is the only one without a built in mic, so have a plug in. Now, this seems to be over sensitive and was causing a sort of feedback with the other links. :wallbang: Anyway, after an hour or so, having sorted most of the problems we abandoned for this evening and will have another test run with computers at each end of the house to see if that helps.

My son has also had problems with skype when talking to his 'intended' in America, with link breaks and bad picture. He says Windows Live Messenger works better over distance.
Has anyone else experienced this?

 

I have a macbook as well as a PC. So I use skype or ichat to communicate with friends when I abroad.

Ive connected while in tinhut in the middle of a rain forest, and also while in a desert town where folks still get around on donkeys! Possibly you were having crossover/ competing signals issues from being in the same house? Try from different buildings next time?


You can callibrate your mic to your voice, and it'll be fine!

Anyway Instant Messenging with Messenger will be fine, though there are better IM platforms out there tbh.

Good luck to your kids on their travels, and to you too.

 

I use a high-end headset microphone with Skype. Much kinder to the person at the far end who can hear me clear as a bell rather than having to strain to extract speech snippets from the ether I expect I look a dork, which no doubt adds to their enjoyment too :thumb:

 

I know its not much help in saying that we have no problems using Skype when we speak to my son and daughter-in-law in Bangkok. But that is just one to one. We can be on line for hours without any break up. I use my laptop window 7 amd Mark has a apple mac set up.

 

Thanks all,
We've sorted the situation with the mic. My sons connection with America is the problem. Perhaps there is a problem with receiving and sending, there in particular.