Let me start by saying I have never really delved too far in to the vain and voluptuous land of the video and voice. I've always been worried of taking things past the text format, I think this has something to do with my lack of general good interaction in person.

I first looked in to the web camera side probably over 5 years ago, but back then the technology wasn't all that impressive, they were colourless, undefined, and generally quite ugly things to look at. My last camera was a Creative Labs PD1110, a small camera with no microphone, but upon seeing what this was like compared to modern day equipment when I tried to webcam with a friend, I decided to pass on the idea of saving money, instead preferring to get a new one.

I asked my brother, Daniel, what he used, thinking that he would probably have researched it much more thoroughly than I ever would, and he straight away recommended "anything by Logitech". I had no quarrels with this, as my current mouse, a MX Revolution is from Logitech and I've never really had any trouble with it.

Still, I'm no fool, I research anyway, I probably won't replace a web camera for another 3 to 4 years, so it's worth shelling out a bit more cash for a better product, getting the right balance is tricky.

After much researching, I finally decided the Logitech Quickcam Pro 9000 was worth the high-end price tag of around £55.00 from Amazon, after two days it finally arrived! First thing to say, is the packaging is very similar to that of the MX Revolution, an attractive green with a cut away to show the camera in the box. My second thought was how big it was, I'd seen photos of it against laptops and suddenly against my Samsung SyncMaster 245B it looked gigantic and at first quite intrusive, no longer a problem a week on however.

The video quality is fantastic, it picks me up crisply with auto focus and zoom, the software is equally impressive with face recognition, which enables me to appear as a kitten with moving eyebrows, eyes, nose, mouth and ears. 

The camera has a built in microphone but I've yet to try it, the reason for this being I decided to install Skype on to my macbook as I'd doubted a laptop's microphone would be any good, surprisingly it can hear a lot, without tinkering it picks up breathing and sighing, as well as my insane little noises that everyone always complains about, in fact, this seems to be infectious on the internet as I have found someone else makes the exact same ones, this scares me a little.

I love Skype as a program, the interface is clean, it works nicely, has all the features you want as well.

I am yet to try doing both at the same time, but looking forward to it nonetheless.