Need a program for Video chatting on a PC & a Mac?

Try Skype.

 

i think mercury messenger supports video thru msn... not sure never tried it tho but I think i read that somewhere.. maybe google it?

 

Skype ran fine for me on Windows 7, has she tried the latest beta version?

I would say skype is easily the best to go with, I'm surprised it "crashed the PC" considering 7 is supposed to be so stable.

 

iChat is based on AOL Instant Messenger I believe. There is a PC client for AIM and it supports Video Chat according to the website:

http://download.aim.com/client/69

 

Try using mebeam.com.

 

Skype

I have it on my iMac and my PC, works fine to other users.

No problems video or audio

 

Skype works great for me as well.

Also try the video feature in gmail's gtalk. Works really great as well. Infact its replaced Skype for me.

 

I can speak to PC's from Imac using Skype

 

Another vote for skype. When I was traveling a lot, and before we got an iMac for home (I have a macbook), it's what we used for video chatting. I read all sorts of articles about how to get iChat working with a PC application for video chat, but never got it to work. Skype worked.

 

Three best choices are:

1. Skype. If you have audio problems get the Windows user to untick the silly box in audio settings which lets Skype adjust the volume - it doesn't work very well!
2. Windows user on AIM, Mac user on iChat with an AIM login (which is free to make).
3. Yahoo.

These are the three I've used most and all are quite popular networks so useful to have anyway. MSN doesn't work at all and the Gmail chat seems to flake out a bit on OSX during long chats (might be my setup).

 

Suggestions

1. iChat -> AIM
2. Skype
3. meebo.com (tends to work well cross platform)

 

You can also use aMSN. I used it the other day to video chat to MSN on a windows computer. It's not the best, but it gets the job done.

 

I believe yahoo works across both systems, however my vote is with Skype.

 

I haven't tried Skype, but I can vouch for Yahoo. We've used it for video, voice, and chat between Mac and PC with no issues.

 

iChat and AIM.

 

Was that your problem though or hers (given that hers crashed)?

Does it happen in the Skype test call? It might just be a configuration thing in the Skype settings.

If it's a no go, I'd tell her to get AIM and you can set up iChat with an AIM account for yourself (easy). That gives you the slightly harder job, which sounds like the best deal if she doesn't like tinkering with computers much.

 

That is not a crash at all, it is just IE8 reporting an incompatibility with the skype plugin. Just choose the option to never use the plug-in. This plugin just gives you the ability to click on a phone number on a web page and skype will automatically dial it. You don't need it.

I use skype all the time to have video chats with my sister - she's running XP and I OS X. It works really well.