Re:Skype belongs to eBay (Score 1)

I've had no problems with full-duplex communication using Skype on my Mac, and others at work have used it on their Windows PCs with no problem. I would suspect your half-duplex issue is related to your specific setup.

There IS a problem with Skype not being "full-duplex." I think that Skype has to switch transit and receive in the system, sorta like a very fast push-to-talk. There's also the inevitable latency lag for each side of the conversation. This is a problem for me personally because I tend to even have real world conversations in "full-duplex." I might jump in a bit as we talk but it's partly "signifying."

We recorded 3 remote partipants in a Skype conference call - one on a cell phone called using Skype out - for episode #14 of The Pilotcast. If you listen you'll hear about midway through when I'm rudely interrupting, but we found that Ron on his phone couldn't hear me. I edited out a handful of other times that happened. We often have "Sorry. No, you go first." during sessions like this.

This Skype conference call was hosted on a single 1.4MHz 1GB Mac Mini which had 2 recordings - local mic and Skype - being made at the same time with Audio Hijack. I did open up a port for Skype on my firewall. The recordings we used for the show were done on Dan's PowerMac G5, where I'm one of the three remote on Skype to him. He's the only one recorded locally. You can hardly tell the difference.

Although we have had crashes, Skype has held up for us really well during show recordings. Let's hope it gets better and not worse as eBay takes over and these Radio Shack customers join in.