improving your iSight
Apple just sent me an iSight–the video conferencing camera designed for use with Apple's iChat A/V, for evaluation. It's zero-configuration video conferencing for the masses (or, at least, the masses with iMacs, iBooks, PowerBooks and the like). And thus far, it's been great.
Except for the fact that I can't converse with anyone in the outside world by video, that is. At first, I thought this was a matter of horsepower; my two day-to-day Macs are powered by 450 MHz G4 processors. I managed to get up a link to my old partner in crime–a rabid iSight fan–from my wife's new 800 MHz G3 iBook without a problem.
But then, with the help of a second iSight camera, I established that I could get the two G4s to conference with each other over the household LAN (albeit with some latency). So now I'm wondering if it's a matter of bus speed, or if my problems are related to my Internet provider–I have a Comcast cable modem.
Sure enough, a quick check with a couple of bandwidth tests reveals that my available bandwidth is down to 400k — less than half of what it was three months ago. Apparently, others in my neighborhood have signed up for Comcast's cable-modem service, and my share of the pipe is dwindling.
The hearbreak of shared broadband.
Still, there's the matter of the iSight working with the iBook. I don't get it. I'll have to do some more testing.