Skype or vid conference users...HELP!

Hopefully someone has fixed this bug or one like it:

My girlfreind and I both have macbook pro's and spend a lot of time 150 miles apart so we set up Skype accounts to do video conferencing.

Vid works great but there is an audio glitch that kills the whole thing it is so bad.

It seems to be on my end only:
When I speak there is a severe echo that propagates till it is soo loud it hurts my ears (can't be good for speakers either). When she speaks there is no problem.

All other things being EXACTLY equal (same hardware) I figured it to be some mic setting on my machine so went into sys pref for the mic and was unable to cure it....but noticed something very strange during my attempts:

In mid conference with mic pref open i was attempting to find and input level loud enough to be heard but not so sensitive as to propagae the echo to full on ear-tearing Who Concert feedback levels.

When I adjusted the input down it would stay there foe a sec then it would go up automatically until echo feedback city...wierd thing is that it would not go down automatically to halt feedback. After doing battle with the input sensitivity control (i put it down, mac put it up, etc etc) for 10 min's I gave up.

Hopefully someone more clever than I has had and cured this problem and can help. Thanks in advance...

-DC

Try it with both of you wearing headphones or try using iChat.

If you both have Macs, why don't you use iChat? It is the best video chat App. for Macs. Just a suggestion

Well headphones will prolly work but would prefer to not use them if possible.

If they BOTH did it I would just assume the mic is too close to the speakers (slight design flaw) and I could live with that....was life before these machines so I would not sweat it.... though it would be cool if it actually worked being that they took the trouble to put this stuff in the machine.

But as I said all other things being equal and only mine doing it suggests a settings fix??????

Now maybe someone can school me on I chat: It was the first thing I attempted but then was directed by i chat to a site to get subscription and it required $$$.....if there is a way to set up I chat without a credit card I will give it a go....but with no AIM account etc... I could not figure out how.

and again the skype works perfectly for her machine....she has used it for some time before I got mine (last week) to speak to others it is only mine with the issue....and I would not mind sticking with skype because of the friends and family already set up there....