quality of transmitted video and sound disappointing

[gerric]

Hello,
first of all I would like to apologize if my English appears strange to you,
however I am German and try my best.

I installed a logitech Quickcam Ultra Vision plus Windows Live Messenger a
few weeks ago. Since then I am experimenting but so far I am very
disappointed about the result. The video picture is bad, speech is quite
often very difficult to understand.

I have a rather new computer with an Intel dual core processor, the speed of
my home network is more than sufficient, I have dsl 6000 (socalled in Germany
and fast enough). The same applies to my test partner. His equipment is not
as fast but in my oppinion fast enough. We have tested our connections with
"speedguide.net " a few times and to me everyting seems to be ok.

While chatting we normally reach a bandwidth of only 40 to 70 kbps which
explains the problem. What can I do? Is it just too much traffic in the
internet? Or does a hidden button exist somewhere in the options? Are other
messengers like Skype better in this respect? Or do I expect too much?

Thanks in advance