Digital cameras have become a very popular accessory for computer owners. And, with advantages like no film to buy, no processing fees and instant access to the pictures you take, their popularity is sure to increase.

There is no question that the camera was a hit with the Freshman. Within a few seconds, I was able to snap a photo of the group I was talking to, download it into my laptop and project it onto the screen for everyone to see. The speed and interaction really caught their attention.

When working with the Internet, using a digital camera is very convenient for the same reason. For example, it took very little time to quickly size and optimize those same snap shots and place them on a web page for the kids to view at any later date. The same applies whether I am working a site for a client or uploading holiday photos for family to see around the world.

However, as convenient as these cameras are for the web, they still have at least on major drawback: printing. It is difficult, time consuming and costly to make good prints from a digital camera, much less a print that is equal quality to what we are used to from traditional cameras.

This drawback aside, once you are ready to purchase a digital camera, there are several key factors to consider. In order to achieve the best quality end product, it is important to choose a camera with good optics. As with any camera, a quality lens is the first ingredient to high quality images.

The next thing to consider is how the images are stored in the camera. There are several manufacturers that offer cameras that store images on standard floppy disks. While convenient, he problem with those is that even a small 5" x 7" high quality image is larger than 1.4 megabytes which prevents even one image of this quality fitting in the camera.

A much better option is to select a camera that uses the newer flash card technology. Flash cards are very small storage disks that can hold many times the amount of information available on standard floppies. This lets you store many images on one disk, even at maximum resolution.

This leads us to the final basic component when purchasing a digital camera which is transferring the information to you computer. Almost all cameras come with a serial or USB cable to transfer the images but that can be slow and will really hog the camera batteries.

Cameras using the flash cards have another option which is to purchase a $40 card reader that stays attached to your computer. These are very fast and convenient and are what allowed me to transfer the image to the projector in front of the high school group so quickly and easily. Not to mention, it will really save your battery life as well.

That brings me to one last tip about using a digital camera. Plan to buy a few sets of Nickel-Metal-Hydroxide batteries and a charger. The initial investment is a bit steep, but, you will make up that cost many times over in just a few months of heavy use on your new camera.