It was a long-time coming — relative feature parity with the PC — and it’s been a bumpy ride since this milestone release first appeared late last year. Personally, I switched back to Skype 2.x for a stretch in order to restore compatibility with overseas relatives. Now, it appears the last of the big bugs have been exorcised.

Skype 5.0.0.7994 (release notes) is an updated release that solves issues that have made the industry-standard voice and video over IP solution unusable for some. Notably, it addresses a problem where Skype would take over a Mac’s video camera even when the app wasn’t running.

Issues fixed in this release:

• Skype was taking ownership of the video camera
• Skype crashed after connecting video camera using firewire cable
• Seldom Skype crashed on ending call to landline
• Skype crashed on Leopard when closing in application credit payment window

Get your copy of Skype 5.0.0.7994 here (19.5MB).