I got this with some trepidation as there were no reviews, and I saw some very mixed reviews of other webcams. This one turned out to be excellent for use with WindowsXP (I haven't checked it with anything else). The software has to be installed before the camera is connected, and it is very straightforward. The software leaves an icon in the taskbar so that you can quickly get at the settings, and you can change a lot of things, including backlight compensation which works well even if you have a window right behind you. There is a decent depth of focus so you don't have to fiddle with it all the time, and it works in a good range of lighting conditions. For Skype it is simple, and (adjusting the manual focus) you can even see to read parts of pages close up. Definitely recommended and at a very moderate price.