I guest if one's expectations are low then you are right. I am glad innovators don't have your outlook, "there really isn't any reason to improve.."

Couldn't be simpler than that.

A phenomenon that I observed whilst traveling through Africa a few months ago, (Senegal, Zimbabwe and South Africa) was that mobile operators had skipped over Edge in most cases and gone straight to 3g/HSDPA from no data services or basic GPRS and also were doing a roaring business selling data cards and USB modems with HSDPA capability circumventing DSL and fiber solutions that are probably more difficult to setup and maintain in Africa.
I did a GoogleTalk video call with my GF back in the US over the shared HSDPA link and it worked perfectly.

And additionally goofy in Canada. Similar to the one toll road we have up here only corporate or wealthy users dare make even limited use of xG. And what you get for your megabucks is mostly crap.

that's why I said it the other way, people are smart enough but get blinded by it all even if the basics aren't as scary as they seem. Driving comparisons might be parallel parking, backing up with the rear view, manual transmission, basic courtesy. Driving isn't difficult either if you take the time up front to learn it. But most choose to never learn the scary stuff like driving a stick shift.

You don't have to go through everything I did. I *choose* to do it that way so that I'm in complete control and can have every feature I want without extra cost.

So let's assume for the moment that you have an account at a SIP provider that supports video calls. These are the steps:
using the built in account tool that came with the NIT: Account Settings, New, Service (SIP), username @ servername, password. done.

Since you are the client talking to a server configured properly (we hope) you don't need any firewall tricks or fancy settings. I've never had to do that. My NIT phone works from almost any WiFI I've been to. The local retail store filters down to html so from there no WiFI other than web will work (one reason to not shop there...). But from nearly everywhere else with WiFI my N8 has worked and the real test is a working inbound call. The N8 is pretty good at seamlessly going online at configured APs (it gets easier over time as you add SSIDs) and the SIP client registers within a few seconds.

Dedicated provider's software lock down the server name so you only need a name/password. You give up flexibility for ease of initial setup. Generic SIP requires the server name in addition, still easy. I'll admit it can get tricky with some providers but not always.

However I'll assume that you don't have a video capable SIP provider, the other posters have provided details to googletalk and services which should be very easy. Or 'Just Easy Enough'(TM)...

Sorry to ramble...
But I coincidently received an inbound call with video just moments after posting. My girl friend picked up a WiFI signal at the grocery store and decided to call me. She would be long distance via a cell but the call was free between the NITs and the video was good.

"...I'd gotten the impression from other posts on here that it took all kinds of herculean efforts to get the tablet video chat working, but that's totally untrue, it's a very simple process..."

The key was know the "special handshake" that took me a lot of effort...I am kind of slow it seems...

You have to find and then click on chat, oh so very easy once you know that, say I could of had a V8 too...

Anyways, if anyone...here is a link

http://www.internettablettalk.com/fo...ght=googletalk

I just wanted to throw in my $.02 worth.

It isn't the 5 minutes that throw people off, it is the uncertain payback from the 5 minutes (and like one person already pointed out, will you have to re-invest that time later to set it up again? That uncertainty is also a huge stumbling block).

And for the record, it took me wayyyyyy more than 5 minutes. I've been trying on and off to get video chat working between an N800 and an N810 for months. (I bought them to investigate VoIP and video calling). I couldn't get it to work until today.

Most successful video calls seem to go through google talk, but I didn't want to use google talk. I've been trying to get gizmo (4 and 5) to work with sip accounts (and some grandcentral thrown in). But it never worked for me. Voice worked just fine, video never made it over the network.

My wife is going out of town for the better part of a week and since she has stated how she will miss us and wants to video call, I stooped to setting up a second googletalk account. Using that, I was able to make video calls at last. Googletalk to Googletalk. (ambivalent Google cheer here. They are a public company now that by law needs to put shareholder value first.)

That doesn't seem to be what most people are thinking of (considering that many savvy people are using asterix) but that was what I was reduced to. At least it works now, but I spent way more than 5 minutes on this, and I can tell you for certain that my mom would not.

I am happy that we now have a way to videochat, but I am still nonplussed that I couldn't get it to work any other way. (tips and pointers on how to get it to work otherwise are still appreciated, though I won't be able to test them for a few weeks.)

I would suggest, unless you WNT the adventure of setting up SIP and all that, just get a Gizmo account (now that you already have a google account, so that is done).

A Gizmo account is free - and then both you and your wife can video chat over gizmo.

In fact you can setup a new Gizmo account straight from the Nokia itself. And Gizmo to Gizmo calls are free.
If 2 people already have the same platform (Nokia N810 or N800), then a Google chat or a Gizmo chat for Video is the simplest solutions, without having to go the SIP server way.

Quite frankly I dont know why you didn't investigate the first option - setting up a google account to activate the Google chat software on both ends - that is the simplest solutions. Next up is Gizmo.

I also keep Skype installed as a standby in case Gizmo happens to have a bad day (of course I have to give up my video in that case).

I admit to only ever using googletalk for video chat so perhaps that is why I have had so few issues. It would be REALLY nice if Skype video chat worked so I could chat with my 100's of friends who use that app instead of trying to invite them to gizmo.

Slightly off topic, but for anyone who's interested in the whole "run your own Asterisk server" approach... the easiest way to go about it is to grab a copy of AsteriskNOW (liveCD and installable). Basically it's Asterisk designed to be user friendly... you can get a full switch up and running from nothing in about 15-20 minutes depending on the speed of the machine you're installing on. It comes with a web-based GUI to manage extensions, dialplan options,etc.

If you want to use it just for video chat between friends/etc you don't even need to worry about sip providers and things, just add a few extensions that use SIP as the protocol, and make sure that the H263 codec is enabled for them. I haven't used the gui in a while, but if the option for this isn't in the GUI it's extremely easy to add to the config file:
http://www.voip-info.org/wiki-Asterisk+video

It's by no means intended to be easy for complete new comers to technology as the thread initially talks about, but if you want to try something new and neat you don't need a lot of Linux experience or anything to get it going!

Oh, one last tip... I don't know if the gui has the option, but for me I found it was important to enable NAT support since I'm behind a NAT router:
http://www.voip-info.org/wiki-Asterisk+sip+nat
(it's as easy as adding nat=yes to your extension definitions).

Thanks,
-Rob

Based on this post


I went and put gizmo on my home pc and my n810. Besides the video from the 810 being horrible when viewed on either platform (as always) the video on the 810 (from the PC) constantly crapped out even at 128x96 pixels. Are there some tuning factors I need to do?