thx, that was the replies I was looking for. I figured it wouldn't take many gold coins to get a better camera than built in ones. A cheap mike is certainly miles better than the build in one in the laptop.
In my experience from still photo, if you have a badly lit, blurry and noisy pic and add low resolution on top it looks absolutely abysmal, whereas if you have a well lit sharp pic and add low resolution on top it still looks ok.