SEEING IS BELIEVING
I've been doing a few more video conference calls with of late, with both business and family counterparts. They've been more prevalent when I'm using one of the Macs than a PC, even though I have webcams and Skype video-conferencing software on both platforms.
But as the Apple ad subtly suggest, it's just a tad more convenient to launch a video call on a Mac than a PC due to the integrated hardware and software solution.
But this post isn't a Mac vs. Windows discussion, but more about the general state of video chats for mainstream uses in early 2007.
I thought I'd share some of my anecdotal conclusions, takeaways and frustrations about the said state of video chats. So in no particular order, here goes:
1. Skype Video calls work more often than iChat AV video calls. This is not to set off a Skype vs. Mac debate. But anecdotally I've found that almost half the time, I've had no success connecting via video iChat with someone after multiple attempts. I'm not alone in this, as this forum discussion illustrates.
More often than not, one of us gets a message that the other party isn't connecting. The problem has to do more with the port setups on the routers and firewalls at either end of the video call, and generally has a fix.
But it takes more time and geeky effort to deal with it. Here's a page over at Apple support discussing the possible causes and fixes.
In the meantime, it makes ad hoc video calls via iChat as much of a crap shoot as dialing into an online service in the bad-old dial-up modem days over a decade ago (remember them?)
In almost every one of those instances, I managed to do the same call via Skype. Again, this is anecdotal, and I've yet to see a good review comparing Skype vs. iChat on the video side. But I think it has to do with the architectural differences between how the two services deal with routers and firewalls.
The point is that Apple is marketing video conferencing as a fairly mainstream service. And it does not seem to have the mainstream reliability that's implied just yet.
2. Not quite there for Business calls. Again, this is anecdotal, but I found there are several ergonomic difficulties using video chat regardless of the software used. These are particularly exacerbated when on a business call.
The primary reason for this is that one needs to multi-task on one's computer while in the middle of a business video call. Besides making sure you're making eye contact with your counter party, one also has the need to look at documents that are being discussed, whether in an Office document (Word, Excel, Powerpoint, etc.), or a web page.
Often, before getting on a business video call, I make sure I've got two computers in front of me, one for the video call and the other for the various documents needed to be discussed on the call. That solution obviously does not work as well on a laptop while on the road.
I know there are video collaboration solutions like Webex and others that better integrated tools for this type of video collaboration. And I've used some of them on a number of occasions of late. But again, much of this distracts from the main task at hand, which is focusing on the problems and issues being discussed, instead drawing user cycles into twiddling this software button and that, to just operate the various elements of the video call.
These issues go away for the most part when the video call is a personal family call of course. And one can put up with a lot more hassle for the pleasure of seeing one's kid, nephew/niece/grand-child on the other end of a long-distance video call.
3. Miscellaneous Ergonomic Problems. Here the issues have to do with three things.
a) Eye Contact is difficult more often than not, because one has to look at the video conference window on the PC screen, while looking up at the camera to make eye-contact.
There are some ingenious solutions for this as David Pogue highlights in a hilarious recent post. But it's more stuff to manage, operate, pack and carry.
b) Lighting issues are another factor one needs to deal with on a video call. Most of the time, the lighting needed at the place where the PC sits is just not adequate. And generally not worth the bother to fix that unless you're doing a ton of video calls day in and day out.
Again, there's a software solution for this in a piece of software called iGlasses (found at www.ecamm.com), mentioned recently by Walter Mossberg on a great article on video-blogging. But again, it's yet another element to juggle in what ought to be something as simple as making a phone call.
c) Backdrops become a factor while making a call, especially a business one. Obviously, this includes making sure one's dressed appropriately, and the backdrop the counter-part sees behind you is as professional-looking as possible. Again, there are various solutions here, but take the user more into the professional realm of video calls.
This list of issues is by no means definitive, comprehensive, or show-stopping, on the subject of whether one should use video calls.
And I've purposely stayed away from the issues of occasionally choppy video and/or sound on any of these platforms since they're a generic fact of life of today's internet.
Despite all of them, I'm much happier I have this capability than not. This post is merely to document some of the minor frustrations and issues to date. Over time, most of them will be solved with better technology and services.
But for now, it's a brave, new world, for the first-time, mainstream user firing up the old webcam, integrated or not.
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