[X4U] iChat first impressions

[Jim Freeman]

I had my first real iChat session today: my parents on one end in 
California and me with my kids in Montreal. Set up was great. We both 
plugged in and it just worked. I had previously set up an iChat account 
for my father so that helped. Of course it took him a long time to 
figure out that he needed to press the "accept" button. But then we 
were up and running. For our purposes it was a little awkward. The kids 
(2 and 4 yrs)  wanted to put their faces right in the computer, which 
means they can't be seen. And it's hard to carry on a real conversation 
over built-in speakers/microphone (new 12" G4 powerbook on my end). 
Next time we'll try a plug-in headphones/microphone. The other 
challenge with kids is that they are constantly in motion and 
apparently fast movement doesn't transmit very well. iChat seems to be 
great for talking heads but less great for hyper kids. My parents 
complained that they got a lot of colored squares on the screen.

Jim