This is a quite common question and according to this Sony support tutorial it should work:
http://esupport.sony.com/US/perl/tutorial-display.pl?tut_id=380
1) you will need the AC adapter (it will not work on camera batteries)
2) tutorial says that you need to have a video-IN jack in your computer. Most probably you don’t have it, unless you have a higher end TV card, so use a video to USB adapter – there are lots of them on ebay (for instance search for: "easycap USB video capture adapter" it costs ~ and should do the job)
I’m posting this question along with the solution because I’m considering buying DSC-W80 and I’m just wondering if there is anybody who has actually tried this solution with any cybershot.
I tried it with sony handyman video camera and it worked without any problem, skype picked it up immediately.
There are many videos on youtube showing how to use a number of picture and video cameras as a webcam, but none of them is actually Sony. I believe it should work with Sony as well, but was wondering if anybody has tried it yet.
There are many similar questions already answered at Yahoo Answers, but they all say it is not possible. I can’t reply to them because they are already closed for reply… hence a new post.
I use my Sony video camera as a webcam on my HP Pavilion laptop. I had to get a video capture cable ($25) to do it though as my laptop didn’t have a video card. It works well, and the same cable lets me use my Canon PowerShot digital camera work as a webcam as well. I couldn’t get either to work as webcams without the cable.