I'll probably get shot to bits for this, but here goes...
best webcam I have ever used, wasn't a webcam at all. It was an Olympus point-and-click one megapixel camera I bought ages ago, that happens to also do webcam stuff. I bought a small tripod for it (one of those eight inch jobbies) for a couple of quid out of Tesco and stuck it on that.
Using the built in mic on a webcam isn't exactly brilliant so using it with a separate headset or mic and speakers is better. So if you can pick up a small camera with webcam facility, then it can be a lot more effective in these broadband days as the image sensor is going to be so much greater in quality than a cheap and usually nasty standalone webcam
