We've acquired a couple of Webcams as part of the process of investigating communications technologies that might replace all or part of the functionality of the labs. Spent some time today with Greg and Stew testing these out with Skype:

• Seamless instant functionality on Windows (didn't even install the driver).
• Same on OSX, although when Skyping between OSX and Windows, it appeared that the Windows-connected camera was feeding better quality video out. Possibly needs some configuration.
• Problems finding an app that could use the camera on Linux, although Ekiga seems to work OK with the camera.

So on Win and Mac at least, Skype works well for audio, video and simultaneous chat. We now need to test conference calls to establish the maximum effective numbers of stations on one subnet which can participate in a call, with and without video.