Want To Purchase A Webcam. Advice Appreciated

[65Craig]

I need to head back to the States for a month or so to handle some finances... On my trips home my wife and I speak via skype a couple of times a day and thought it would be cool to add a webcam, especially now that we found out she is pregnant.

At ICON Square and Computer Plaza here in Chiang Mai they have a tons of them, but the prices vary from about 500 Baht to a couple of thousand. I really don't need anything too fancy, but don't want crap either. I would like one that has good picture quality yet is fairly inexpensive as it will only be used for about a month or two.

Any advise on Brand, Quality, Price would be appreciated, as I'm fairly out of the loop on Webcams.

Thanks:-)

[dave_boo]

The Logitech QuickCam is an excellent line to choose from. Can't say the prices in Thailand, but for ~$65 you can get one hel_l of a webcam.

[cophen]

Another vote for Logitech. I have a Fusion and it's excellent.

[wxpwzrd]

Logitech Orbit on my desk... Can't beat Logitech cams. If I suggest alternate brands, then I mention Microsoft or perhaps Creative (in that order).

[The Vulcan]

Just bought the Logitech QuickCam for notebooks - 2,000 baht and great

[pitrevie]

I used to have the Logitech Pro 4000 which was very good although not that brilliant when balanced on top of my monitor. The Logitech Pro 9000 is a much better camera and also far easier to mount on the flat screen monitors, the picture is absolutely sharp. I had to wait until I returned to London as I could not obtain it here.

[ignis]

Another vote for Logitech. + very easy to download new drivers.

Have a very good + cheap Chineese one but cannot download new drivers

[yeti]

I used to have the Logitech Pro 4000 which was very good although not that brilliant when balanced on top of my monitor. The Logitech Pro 9000 is a much better camera and also far easier to mount on the flat screen monitors, the picture is absolutely sharp. I had to wait until I returned to London as I could not obtain it here.

Agree, you should wait to be in the US, and grab the Logitech Quickcam Pro 9000, which will give you the best quality possible with Skype (you can check Skype website for High Definition video calls, for which you can use only a couple of webcams, including this one)

[65Craig]

Thanks for all of your help... Looks like Logitech is the brand to get. I think I'll buy one here for my wife, then when I get back to the states buy the Pro 9000. Once again, thanks a lot.

[jfchandler]

Just a caution note...

I have on my Windows XP desktop now a Logitech Pro 4000 (purchased in the U.S.), which has worked great for me the past couple years... Very good quality.

However, recently, I upgraded a different machine, a laptop, from XP to Vista...and discovered that, thus far, Logitech does not seem to have posted Vista drivers for either the Pro 4000 or the QuickCam model I already had for my laptop.

So, as best as I can tell, I can't use either Logitech web cam on my now Vista laptop... When I was searching around the Logitech web site for Vista drivers, I found a model compatibility chart that seemed to show a lot of their web cams do not currently have Vista support.

I was a bit surprised by that, considering how big a player they are in the web cams arena... Maybe it's their way of telling you it's time to buy a new web cam from them...

[regedit]

I used to have the Logitech Pro 4000 which was very good although not that brilliant when balanced on top of my monitor. The Logitech Pro 9000 is a much better camera and also far easier to mount on the flat screen monitors, the picture is absolutely sharp. I had to wait until I returned to London as I could not obtain it here.

Agree, you should wait to be in the US, and grab the Logitech Quickcam Pro 9000, which will give you the best quality possible with Skype (you can check Skype website for High Definition video calls, for which you can use only a couple of webcams, including this one)

Skype website says the pcs should have dual-core processors to benefit from the high def video calls. Anyone tried this on a non-dual core ?

[pitrevie]

Thanks for all of your help... Looks like Logitech is the brand to get. I think I'll buy one here for my wife, then when I get back to the states buy the Pro 9000. Once again, thanks a lot.

I had no problem getting Vista drivers for the Pro 9000 from their website.

[JaiDamJungLoei]

It's not just the cam, the computer and network speed will have a great deal to do with video quality. Skype will handle VGA (640 x 480 pixel) video very well if you have the right camera, enough computer power and a good network. Skype says you need a dual core processor to handle the encoding and decoding of the 2 streams of video to have what they term 'HQ' video, plus a 2MP web cam and 384Kb/s up and down on your network. Other wise you're limited to QVGA (320 x 240 pixel) and pretty slow frame rates.

The wife & I Skype a couple times a day when I'm traveling. If we're both using our dual core laptops with built in 1.3MP cameras, we get a VGA picture at about 15 frames per second. Blown up to full screan it's at least as good as TV picture quality.

If my wife uses my home Athlon XP3000 single core processor desk top with a Logitech Quickcam, we get a QVGA window at 1 to 2 frames per second. Usually the picture is blurry due to the cam and computer not being able to capture frames fast enough to stop motion blurring. This normally uses about 6.5KB/s up and down (which is too fast for dial up).

I'm pretty close to buying a Logitech Quickcam Orbit, plus new motherboard and processor for my desktop just to make it better at Skype. The cam is US$130, but it has auto focus and is motorized with face following software, then maybe I won't spend most of every call telling my wife to move back in front of the camera!