Chat with coworkers from your home PC
When the need arises to discuss a problem with a coworker, many employees prefer to meet in person rather than talk on the telephone or send an email message. However, as more businesses let employees telecommute, these in-person meetings become less frequent. Whether it's with a coworker across campus, a group in a conference room across town, or a friend in Milwaukee, making a visual connection adds another dimension to the conversation. Because your coworkers and friends already have computers and Internet connections, adding that visual element through Internet videoconferencing doesn't need to cost much; the software is available free or at a very low cost, and a pair of PC cameras can cost as little as $80. Videoconferencing over the Internet can be an important tool for home-office use and can lower your phone bill.
Many vendors—including Aiptek, D-Link Systems, IBM, Logitech, Creative Technology, and Philips—offer PC cameras. You can use almost any PC with a USB port, a bidirectional sound card, and speakers for videoconferencing. (PC camera processor requirements usually hover around a 266MHz Pentium processor.) PC cameras usually come with drivers for Windows 2000, Windows Me, and Windows 98. At the time of writing, most vendors had introduced drivers for Windows XP, and the rest should have them by the time you read this. (For more information about videoconferencing with XP, see the sidebar "Should You Use Windows XP?")
I was unable to find any PC cameras that supported Windows NT 4.0 or Win95, but that wasn't surprising because neither OS fully supports USB. However, Winnov offers a videoconferencing kit called Videum Conference Pro (PCI) that supports XP, Win2K, Windows Me, NT, Win98, and Win95. The kit includes a camera with a built-in microphone and an audio/video (A/V) capture board with dedicated sound circuitry. At $359, Videum Conference Pro (PCI) is more expensive than USB-based PC cameras. However, because of the product's dedicated sound circuitry and its freedom from USB port bandwidth limitations, the vendor claims that the kit offers better video quality and better A/V synchronization than solutions that employ USB-compatible PC cameras and general-purpose PC audio subsystems. (For more information about videoconferencing, see "Related Reading.")
Selecting a Camera
Cameras come bundled with a variety of creative applications for video email, snapshots, movie editing, and customized calendars (among other things), but all the cameras include Microsoft NetMeeting—Microsoft's free conferencing product, which you can also download from Microsoft's Web site. I found Web cameras selling for $30 to $140 each. At the lower end of the price continuum, models such as D-Link's DSB-C100 USB Digital Video Camera, IBM's PC Camera, and Philips' ToUcam provide videoconferencing basics: a CMOS image sensor and a small collection of software.
In the $70 to $80 range, you'll find models such as Logitech's QuickCam Web camera, which features a built-in microphone. You'll also find models such as Aiptek's PenCam 2 camera and Logitech's ClickSmart 310 camera, which can serve as videoconferencing cameras as well as very basic digital cameras for snapshot photography when untethered from your PC. Most models in this price range provide multielement glass lenses that can provide crisper images than the simpler lenses found in the lowest-priced PC cameras. Once you reach the $100 price point, you'll find PC cameras such as IBM's Net Camera Pro camera that use charge-coupled device (CCD) image sensors rather than the cheaper CMOS variety. CCD sensors generally provide better image quality than their CMOS cousins. Although the Net Camera Pro camera lacks a microphone, it does provide a composite video input jack that lets you capture video from a VCR.
At the upper end of the price range, you'll find more sophisticated PC camera—digital camera combinations. For example, Logitech's ClickSmart 510 camera and Creative Technology's PC-CAM 300 camera use CCD image sensors, provide built-in microphones, and offer greater resolution and storage capacity for snapshot photographers.
Making the Connection
The quality of your videoconferencing experience depends heavily on the speed of the Internet connection at either end of your call. With high-speed connections on both ends, such as a LAN, cable modem, satellite, or ADSL service, video quality and voice synchronization are very good. Video frame rates can be as high as 10 frames per second (fps) to 12fps at low resolutions (e.g., 176 x 144 pixels) or 6fps to 10fps at 352 x 288 pixels. Note that although you might want a larger, more detailed image, increasing the resolution to 640 x 480 pixels requires four times as much data to be compressed and sent across the communications link. Such resolution is impractical with inexpensive hardware, even with a fast Internet connection.
If one or both ends of the connection use a V.90 56Kbps modem, the communications link becomes a real bottleneck, and even the 352 x 288 pixel resolution is unusable. However, videoconferencing at 176 x 144 pixel resolution is still possible, albeit with low frame rates (2fps to 4fps) and poorer A/V synchronization. In contrast, television uses a 30fps rate, and movies are shot at 24fps. Choppy video and slightly delayed audio might be acceptable for family use, but I strongly suggest upgrading to a high-speed Internet connection if you use videoconferencing for business purposes.