Bad Skype connection

Hey everyone,

I updated mac skype to 5.0 about a week after it came in January. My partner, at my prompting, updated his skype (Windows) at the same time to 5.1. While we had recently been having some issues with video and sound quality (freezing, dropped video, fuzzy quality, garbled or dropped audio) before updating (which is what prompted me to look for an update), since updating we haven't been able to have a single conversation online through skype. My audio to him is usually ok, but I can't get decent audio on my end, I can rarely get a video feed from him, and my video to him freezes or drops continuously. When we are skyping, my airport signal shows as being strong (although I can't seem to do anything else online while skype is running a chat), while his internet signal shows as poor; however, he has been in touch with his ISP and has tried all sorts of things with the modem and router, with no luck.

I am wondering if these new versions of skype might be hogging the internet, our computer resources, or something similar? Also wondering if anyone else is experiencing similar problems? I have been digging around online and while everyone seems to hate 5.0 (I agree) mostly it's for aesthetic/UI reasons. No mention of connection impossibilities like we are having - which makes me think it is his internet connection that is the problem, even though we can't figure out what exactly that is.

I am using Mac OS X 10.5.8, Processor: 2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, Memory: 2GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM (MacBook, circa 2007).

Any suggestions would be welcome! Maybe also suggestions on skype alternatives...

usually when Skype is lagging its due to internet connection. your mac is certainly capable of running a feed.

your airport signal is only the strength of your wifi connection to your router (the speed at which your computer connects to the internet is a different measurement, in Kb/s)

you can download a dashboard widget called istat pro to monitor your connection speed.
iStat Pro, a Dashboard Widget by iSlayer

you could try a different time of day, as when a lot of users are online Skype can slow down.

this is also the same with ISPs, my connection usually slows down drastically at around 6-8pm, and speeds up loads at about midnight. (though i have a dodgy network setup).

is his connection speed slow? if so this is probably the cause of your problem anyway.

hope i have helped somewhat.

Thanks for the tips! That all makes sense and I will look into the connection speed at both ends.

As an update, though - we both uninstalled our upgrades and reinstalled the previous versions of skype that we had been using before - 2.8 for me, 4.2 for him. And tonight - ta da - back to our old (not great, but working) connection. I got both audio and video! It didn't drop! It didn't lag! It didn't freeze! It wasn't very sharp, but hey, I'll take it.

The only other thing that might have made a difference is that he installed a new virus program on both his computers tonight, and found a few viruses.