The world has become a much smaller place thanks to the Internet and the ready availability of online chat programs. For those of us who really want to interact with each other the ultimate in communications is the web cam. This is as close to the video phone as most of us can get at an affordable price. Not only can we use a web cam to talk to friends and family, but now many businesses are using for conferences rather than sending their employees on long trips that are not very cost effective.

There are so many different web cams on the market it can be hard to know which ones are worth the money and what you should be looking for to make sure that you are investing your money wisely. Before you start to look for a web camera the first thing you need to be sure of is that your computer will actually run the camera. Your hardware and memory must meet at least the minimum requirements of any camera you are considering and for the best results should exceed them.

Among the features and functions you should look for are:
1.   Mounting: Since most of us want a web cam to chat with, it is going to have to mount on or sit on the top of our monitors. You need to take a close look at the base of each camera to make sure that it will mount on your LCD monitor or in the case of and older CRT monitor that the base is big enough to keep the camera from falling over.

2.   Image Quality: This is one of the most controversial and criticized problems with web cams. The quality of your picture is determined by the frame rate, resolution and the quality of the lens your camera has.  
3.   Start with Frame Rate: A video camera is rated by the number of frames it is capable of capturing per second and is listed as FPS or frames per second. In general the higher the number the less flicker there is going to be providing you with a smoother picture.

4.   The Lens: Like any camera the quality of the lens used in your web cam is vital to how good the picture is going to be. You should make sure that the camera you buy uses a brand name glass lens and not a plastic one for optimum quality.

5.   Resolution: Just like a digital camera, all web cams have megapixel ratings. Here again higher resolution (more megapixels) will give you a better quality image. Typically web cams are either 320 X 240 or 640 X 480 resolution and run 1.3 megapixels. More expensive cameras tend to have the highest ratings.

6.   Sound: Since most of us now use audio to chat with you might want to look for a web cam that has a built in microphone that facilitates this.

The rest of what differentiates the web cams is generally in the software that comes bundled with it. Top quality software allows you to adjust focus manually or does it automatically for you and can even follow your face as you move around. Zooming functions can be very useful for business meetings as can the ability to adjust colours and take snap shots, all of these are part of the software.

In the end as with most items you buy in the computer world you only get what you pay for. If you are not overtly fussy about the quality of the image you can buy relatively decent web cams for under £20, but if you want a superior quality image with great sound your camera is likely to cost over £100. Carefully research each camera you are thinking about buying at the various review sites and pick the one that has the highest ratings that falls within your price range, this way you will not be disappointed with your purchase.