Bloody Skype

[Rook]

and bloody Yahoo! Messenger have buggered up my father's PC 3 times between them. I'm not looking for a fix, but if anyone knows the problem, please share.

What I am looking for is a VoIP service that won't crash my dad's 5 year old XP yet again. Being this old (and not a pedigree racer to begin with) the specs aren't great, but I don't think that's the problem. With both Skype and Yahoo, we'd get 2 to 5 minutes through a call, then his computer would crash, leaving me somewhat bemused when he suddenly stopped talking (since you don't get a 'dead tone' on internet phones).

Any suggestions on a more friendly piece of kit? (We started out with Tesco, which ironically works for him but not for me, since my Uni's intranet layout messes with Tesco's way of connecting the phone)

[Meatwad]

Er, skype doesn't cause old comps to crash... we've got a 98 laptop running xp that has no problems with Skype... Maybe something you have installed is interfering with it? Could be an antivirus/firewall or maybe just some drivers that don't like it...

[Rook]

Have ZoneAlarm installed, it doesn't seem to like it... unfortunately I don't have much information, as the computer in question and I are some 300 miles distant at present.

Main thing is, does anyone know of any other VoIP software I can try?

[The Grim Reaper]

Google Talk
http://www.google.com/talk/

The page even has an online version.

[Smartie]

Er, skype doesn't cause old comps to crash... we've got a 98 laptop running xp that has no problems with Skype... Maybe something you have installed is interfering with it? Could be an antivirus/firewall or maybe just some drivers that don't like it...

Quite so. My PC runs WIN98, and was built in 1999 (OLD SKOOL), and whilst I may have to put coal in the damn thing to make it work, Skype MSN and Yahoo messenger all work just fine.
I also use AVG virus software AND Zonealarm with no problems.

The only thing I get with my PC is sometimes I run out of virtual memory as it's only a 20GB drive (I have XP on a second drive which is 80GB where I store all my photos and the pr0ns and the like...), but this is almost always ONLY when when playing poker on facebook.

It's something else probably conflicting which I don't know about as I'm not techy, but I just wanted to point out WIN98 has no problems with the above software.

[Aladdin Sane]

As has been mentioned, the old computer probably needs a bit of a clean-up if Skype is crashing a lot.

That being said, however, I would still second getting Google Talk. I used to use that when I was still on Windows and found it generally used less system resources and had a much higher audio quality.