ISpQ—pronounced "eye speak"—offers an impressive number of capabilities, including multiperson video chat (for three or more users) and video e-mail support. Unfortunately, poor quality and a variety of problems make this one of the least compelling solutions in our roundup.

iSpQ's greatest fault is that it has major limitations when working from behind a firewall. To begin with, we tested the software with both a Linksys BEFW11S4 router and a Netgear FWAG114 Prosafe Dual Band Wireless VPN Firewall. We were unable to receive video through the Netgear router, and it took an hour of tweaking port settings and speaking to iSpQ's tech support to establish a video connection from behind the Linksys device.

Corporate firewalls are far more problematic, since most corporate users can't open firewall ports. iSpQ is simply not an option for business users.

Once set up, the software is relatively easy to use and offers some interesting features. For example, you can invite up to four people into a video chat room. (Note that with each additional person you'll need more bandwidth, or else video and audio will be compromised.) And you can easily record a video with audio and "Vmail" it to your friends and family.

The procedure for adding a buddy to the contact list could have been designed better; a video chat invitation or message has to be sent and accepted. We were frustrated that we had to start an actual conversation (either video or text chat) each time we wanted to add a user to our list.

Video quality also left much to be desired. When we tested video throughput while using a standard phone for audio, there was at least a 2-second delay between the speech and the video. Most of the time the video was choppy over cable modem connections. And on occasion, the program froze and forced us to relaunch it.

In-call features include a push-to-talk button (as on a walkie-talkie) and a hands-free mode. Other options are the ability to change the video size (160-by-120 or 320-by-240), your display name, and the sound settings. iSpQ also offers a network diagnostic tool that can detect whether the program is compatible with your Internet connection.