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It seems like nearly everyone has friends and/or family in faraway places. Shoot, if you don’t own a car even 20 miles could be far away I guess..

But I wonder how many of us who have friends and relatives far away are missing out because, thanks to broadband and webcams, we could see them any time we want to!

My sister Teresa and her husband Brandon live in Arizona and just recently added a baby girl to their family. Since Grandma, Grandpa, and the rest of us all live in Minnesota seeing this new baby girl could have been quite a challenge and very expensive in days gone by.

With all the advances in digital communications I knew there had to be an inexpensive way to communicate with voice and video.  And, if we needed a solution, I figured there were probably other people who might be looking for one as well.

So I set out to find a way for our families to be able to hear and see baby Milayna. After checking out several web cams and video services I came up with an excellent combination that’s inexpensive and works great!

First, I bought a Microsoft LifeCam VX-3000 webcam from Amazon. With a 4 out of 5 rating from over 200 reviews and for only $35 it sounded like a great deal. As expected the webcam was simple to set up and has a great picture quality. It even has a built in microphone.

Next, I needed to find an online service so we could call each other and talk. This particular webcam is optimized for use with Windows Live Messenger but I decided to find a different route for folks who don’t have this particular webcam.

After looking at several free and pay services I settled on SightSpeed and am glad I did. The service is free for personal use and it’s easy to set up. Simply fill out a registration form online, download and install the software, and you’re ready to call. Of course the other party will need to get a webcam and sign up for SightSpeed as well.

Last night we had our first video conference call using the VX-3000 webcam and SightSpeed and all I can say is WOW! For my $35 investment the call was priceless.

If you have loved ones far away don’t put this off.  As long as both of you have a broadband connection for less than $50 you could be seeing and talking to each other almost like you were talking face to face…

Regards,

-Bert

This entry was posted on Monday, February 18th, 2008 at 10:39 pm and is filed under Hardware, Software. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.