Linux audio/video questions

[itz100ji-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org (100ji)]

Hi,

I have a few questions about linux audio and video setup. I am using a
HP Pavillion dv5z laptop running the latest version of ubuntu. While
everything works fine, I have a few annoying sound/video issues:

1) Sound issues: sometimes the system doesn't switch to external
speakers. It only works on laptop speakers. I looked around to enable
jack sense etc, but found nothing like that in my settings. While
there are exceptions, most of the time I noticed that the switching
works fine when I connect the external speakers before starting any
applications that use sound card. Any idea why this happens and how I
can fix it?

2) My laptop has a touch sensitive strip that I use to increase and
decrease volume on my laptop. This strip works fine most of the time,
but sometimes I "think" it gets stuck and the volume goes down to 0
and I see no way to bring it up. This issue goes away when I reboot
the laptop. I am unable to diagnose the right cause for this. How
would I know which input(keyboard,mouse etc..) is causing this? I
tried xev, but it doesn't show any inputs while this is happening.

3) Have any of you guys tried skype video chatting on linux? Does it
work well for you? I kind of got my video to work on linux but I need
to figure out how to make skype use it.

Thanks,
-S-