if I buy my lovely mother in law a webcam for her birthday, how much bandwith do we need and which one should I buy?

[BumptiousandBustly]

I have been really struggling to find a present for my lovely mother in law for her 70th but I suddenly thought, she adores her grandson and as she lives in Ireland, doesn't see a lot of him.

I thought if we bought them a webcam and us, then she could see him on the computer and she would love that!

FIL is technical by the way, so no problems that end with using it.

The thing is I don't really know anything about webcams.

What bandwidth do we need to talk to each other, what software is best to use, what webcams should we buy?

Any advice gratefully recieved

[BumptiousandBustly]

Any ideas on the bandwith? I simply can't find anything that says.

[MrAnchovy]

Any broadband connection should give you enough bandwidth. Remember that although you can easily get more downstream bandwidth by paying more money, your upstream bandwidth (which determines how fast you can send data) is usually fixed at at much lower rate - 256kbit or 340kbit perhaps. So upgrading to a 10mbit downstream connection won't improve things at all.

Software is easy, Skype.

Webcams are a personal thing; personally I like Logitech. For decent audio quality you need a headset too. You could do worse than this package.

[BumptiousandBustly]

Thankyou very much MrAnchovy. Good point about the upload rates. Will look at that.

Many thanks

[BumptiousandBustly]

Should add, I installed Skype on my pc once and it stopped me accessing the internet, so had to remove it.

Thats why I was wondering if our broadband wasn't quick enough or what else to use.