Maggie's Farm

I looked with interest at that one. But I am on an impossible quest for a good ultra-compact waterproof camera. The Pentax and Olympus reviews (even the flacks) of their waterproof ones are not encouraging. They expatiate about how they look, feel, perform under tough conditions but there is just the "slight" problem that they don't apparently produce very good pictures. Yeah, better a picture you are able to take than no picture BUT...

The Olympus Stylus 730 weatherproof looks less sturdy but still beach and hiking feasible and a nice 3" LCD. But no viewfinder...Ho-hum. How is the Casio Exilim in the rain? Growing up in England, I grew used to being out in all weather and want a digital that will not sizzle dead in the rain.

The Canon SD800 IS is only 7 mp but image stabilized, pretty, and takes really good pictures, but not weatherproof.

The Nikon Coolpix S7, the SOny T10 and T30 and T50 look pretty (we females love jewellry) and sound like they take better pictures, but are not at all rugged...AAARGH

We used to have this slick bright yellow waterproof Minolta 35mm that survived being left out in the rain after our rehearsal dinner (and all the pictures were fine) and baby pictures, and toddlers bashing of it. There should be a market for a similar digital. I guess the digital manufacturers have got used to people trashing or losing or having their digitals stolen every year, so don't want to make durable ones?

Back to the internet and my search for the Holy Grail of cameras...hours of fun...

To apple pie: The absolutely most fun way to videoconference is expensive but worth it: get two Macs, either an iMac G5 w built in iSight camera above the screen (which is also the computer), or one of the newer Macbooks with the isight built in. Then buy a year's membership in mac.com (I think it was $79 or 99) and you can communicate with each other anywhere in the world for free. The resolution on the cameras isn't great, but it is built in, there is nothing to configure, or fragile camera to clip on for the cat or adoring partner to knock off.

I used to spend hours talking with terminally ill relatives an ocean away, and the boost to all of our morale at being able to see and talk with each other when we could not afford weekly plane tickets was priceless. I never managed to figure out how to record the video visits (was rather bludgeoned with the stress of wondering whether each video call would be the last), but am sure that Apple will figure it out. There are bugs to the mac.com email service, it is not perfect, but it is such a relief from all the incessant ads and popups of the others that one can tolerate an occasional draft email vanishing into hyperspace. And the video conferencing is great. Check out the Mac.com site.

My husband always sneered at Apples as double the price for half the utility until he saw this feature. And you can't pry him away from the Apple laptop inherited from one of the relatives we so lately talked with by computer video...No, Apple did not pay me to write this...

Just to be fair, I have seen some cheap PC laptops out there (even bargain Acers from places like TIger Direct and Buy.com) that now have videocams built in. Maybe you can access other free services via pc? I don't know.