Ekiga, Skype, Messenger video calling

[newcr]

I decided to try a video call to family this Christmas day. After 
research, it seemed Ekiga would work with a video call to family members 
(Microsoft users - MSN Messenger).  While Ekiga seems to work in its own 
right (including test call to 500 at ekiga.net), I could not connect to the 
other party (Using MSN Messenger I assume). Not to give up they 
downloaded the windows version of Skype and I downloaded the Ubuntu beta 
version of Skype. Audio call was fine but the program kept on crashing a 
few seconds after enabling video. After a few trails and errors I 
decided that for it to happen, I would have to /"join the dark side"/ 
and set up MSN messenger on my kids XP box (dual boot but the rest of my 
family always boot to XP). While I realise that there is a Windows beta 
version of Ekiga and I have suggested it to the other parties, it is not 
going to happen (Not even interested in non-MS solutions).


*Main question
Has anybody had experiences ... successes .... failures .... 
particularly when the other party uses XP or Vista?*

Has anyone had good experiences with Ekiga to Ekiga video calls?

Also tried aMSN .... video and chat worked fine but audio is not 
incorporated. Same with a few others I think.

My preferred solution is to use Ekiga and call to the other party who 
uses MSN Messenger.

I get the feeling that on Christmas Day it will be a Windows to Windows 
video call.


Thanks
Chris
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