Thanks for your comments! I use the Celestron NexImage (aka Philips Toucam) with a 2x Barlow through the eyepiece holder. I use AmCap to capture the .avi, and then process further in Registax and a bit further in Photoshop Elements. I admit it's been a steep curve
A couple of tricks I've picked up:
1. Focus, focus, focus - the image on the laptop is generally fuzzy, but keep adjusting focus until its the best fuzziness you get (you can up the frame rate to help, but I don't like that so much).
2. For the .avi - I use 5-10fps at the lowest shutter-speed I can get out of AmCap, typically 1/10-1/25s. Also note that Amcap has 2 places where the fps is set, Video Filter which you can use for Gain/Shutter etc. however, the fps there doesn't seem to affect the actual capture (for me) and so I use the setting in Video Capture Pin (this is how the avi. will be created with regards to fps). So I set the latter to 5fps.
Hope this helps!