Now Skype, YM, v chat (facebook), msn video chat seems to be quite the norm. Its worth looking at ways to improve the experience, well at least we have found.
Its a good idea to invest what you can on the cam we personally have noticed using a better Cam can help. Of course you can pay a fortune for top end cams but just a semi decent cam seems to have a noticeable difference. Plus for the typical connection in phill its not gonna get much better if a very high qaulity cam is used so can be over kill.
Ensure you light your self with a Decent light a simple desk lamp aimed at you rather the light reflected from your monitor illuminating you. Makes a dramatic difference. The easier the cam finds it is to auto focus the better, one hint i have seen and then used both for us and the family in phil is have a background ie a wall or a sheet preferably white or grey or off white colour.
Having a room full of people moving around may be good when u miss them but will on most setups end up with a not so good picture.
Basically the less information the computer needs to send to the other computer the better.
Im sure others have plenty of advice they can give
But as the big issue skype had just before xmas demonstrated. The way the system works which is peer to peer ie peopls infomation and your sis passed round a series of other peoples pc's to get to the destination. Can mean that some pc's can be used as supernodes and also even if your not using Skype ie chatting or video camming. Watch your data I believe you can change settings to adjust. But be careful of simply leaving skype on all the time if you need to be careful with your data consumption.
