Can you hear me? Can you hear me now?

June 25, 2003

If you’re running Mac OS X 10.2.6, you *have* to try iChat AV. We’ve owned an iBot webcam for a while, but never used it. My mother-in-law has a webcam and we keep talking about how we have to get it going, but I never thought Macs fully came to the game with videoconferencing. The picture with iChat AV is superb. Way beyond what you typically see with webcams. I’ve had a few video chats with some folks from the Mac lists (it’s Mac to Mac only right now) and it’s been fun. I think we have a tendency to hide behind our keyboards online and while that has its advantages, it’s also nice to be able to reintroduce body language and eye contact back into our worldwide communication. Even without the AV features, the new iChat is much improved…multi-line typing at last among other improvements.

The only issue I’ve had is with audio. My G4/450 is nearly 4 years old and I’ve never been concerned with audio-in. In the past few days I’ve discovered that not only does my Mac have no built-in microphone, but it uses a proprietary mic port that only Apple ever supported called Plaintalk. I went to Staples and bought a cheap $15 microphone headset, only to find that it won’t work. The sound-out works, the sound-in does not. Apple’s tech documents were not helpful and it took me a bit of searching to uncover the Plaintalk truth. Okay, so now I find out that I can use a regular microphone if I had a Plaintalk converter, a little piece that goes in to the port and the microphone goes into that. Unfortunately, this outdated animal doesn’t seem to be available for anything less than about $50. Like I’m going to spend $50 so I can use a $15 microphone for a computer I’m keeping for another 2 months? I don’t think so. I ended up spending $6 on a Buy it Now auction on eBay for a Plaintalk microphone. These things used to come with Macs. It should at least let me have audio until my G5 arrives in August.

If you’d like to chat with me, video or not, feel free to send me an IM at AIM ID JudiS217. :-)

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