Hi, Jon: I'm answering in ALL-CAPS just so you can distinguish my answers from the questions, not because I'm SHOUTING:

...when you next joined a Hearme room, you should have been promted to accept the licence agreement and, on acceptance of this, the plugin should have downloaded and installed itself. Did this happen? NO THIS DID NOT HAPPEN

Do you have more than one browser with Hearme or run the standalone Hearme Voice Creator? Hearme do not document this in thier FAQ but the uninstall/ re-install procedure becomes more complex if you do. If, for example, you had Hearme on IE and later used Netscape, the IE plugin would be marked as uninstalled and would use the Netscape plugin. If you have more than one instance of Hearme, the only way I know of is to search for and remove all instances of EVP.dll and NPJac.dll, to remove the IE plugin as per the FAQ and to remove the registry entry as per the FAQ. NO, I HAVE ONLY USED IE. I DID A SEARCH FOR EVP.D11 LAST NIGHT AND FOR NPJAC.DLL AND FOUND NEITHER ON EITHER MY C OR D DRIVES.

When a connection is made to Hearme, the text box is enabled and I can see no way that the type of modem will make any difference - you are either connected or not. I'M CONNECTED. I'M IN THE ROOM, AND WHEN I PUSH THE F9 KEY, I CAN BE HEARD.

I can only see this one as being a problem with your set up - either the Hearme installation or a Windows issuse on your computer but:

1. Are you certain that you are clicking on the text box to make sure it has focus before typing? I hate asking this one but sometimes we can all be guilty of the most basic "pilot error". ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN. HAVE CHECKED 40 BAZILLION TIMES ON THIS ONE. ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN...

2. Have you tried unchecking the embed text chat window before going into the Hearme rooms? I can't see why this would make a difference but unchecking that option will give you a button on the main screen to open a seperate chat box window. I'LL GIVE IT A SHOT ...

3. Are you sure that you have been connected to Hearme on all your attempts to type? When you could hear others, you clearly were but assuming you have made a subsequent re-install and no one was around to listen too, it is possible that you did not notice that you were not connected. HAVE ONLY TRIED THIS WHEN OTHERS WERE IN THE ROOM, AND AS I SAID, THEY'VE BEEN ABLE TO HEAR ME WHEN I PRESSED THE F9 BUTTON.

SO SORRY TO BE A CONSUMMATE PAIN ABOUT THIS, BUT ... NOW I'M JUST BAFFLED AND CHALLENGED BY WHAT THE HECK COULD BE HAPPENING WITH IT ... KC