Imagine seeing five of your colleagues or friends, who are located in different parts of the world, live on your computer screen. Well, fire up your webcam because this seemingly futuristic scenario is now a reality. Today ooVoo launched free software that allows you to chat and have a six-way video call right on your notebook, and we decided to take it for a spin.

 

With our Logitech Quickcam mounted on our screen, we downloaded the 7.7MB software from ooVoo.com in about 50 seconds. We then created a user name and password and logged into our new ooVoo account. The interface resembles the layout of numerous other chat services but looks most similar to a Skype or an MSN messenger with a black skin. The white-on-black color scheme gives this program a futuristic vibe, and we liked that the pictures of your buddies appeared in the windows next to their names.

 

Initiating a call with our ooVoo buddies was simple. You can double click on one buddy to start a two-way video call. To jump right away into a six-way video call, you can hold down the Ctrl button and highlight up to five buddies and then left click the "Start Video Conversation" button. When you add additional friends, a small box on the left launches with your new caller's face in it, and you can see each of the people participating in the video call in their own boxes. You can even rearrange the Brady Bunch-looking layout; you do this by dragging the boxes to different locations on the screen.

 

While it was cool talking to five people at the same time and having them see exactly what you see, the quality of the video impressed us most. Over a Wi-Fi network we were able to see our video callers very clearly, with no jaggies. We did notice a slight delay over Wi-Fi, but there was no delay at all when we switched over to a Ethernet connection. You'll need to have at least 512MB of RAM on your computer if you want to run ooVoo and other applications at the same time. We noticed that it took 41,892KB to run--more than Skype but less than Yahoo Messenger. 

 

OoVoo also lets you instant message your buddies and hold group chats. The company does not have a termination offering of its own yet that allows you to call to landlines or mobile phones, but it does has plans to launch a mobile version of its application in the near future. The application is available for free starting today at ooVoo.com, and it's definitely worth checking out.