Customer Rating:  
Summary: solid webcam
Comment: Good, solid webcam. Works great with Skype. The only moderately annoying issue is when you press the button on the camera (in Windoze), a pop up appears saying "...call button only works with Windows Live Messenger, do you want to install it now"? There may be a way to turn that off without installing Live Messenger but I haven't looked for it because it doesn't bother me.
Customer Rating:
Summary: High Quality Camera with Great Software
Comment: We have this camera in our living room connected to a 64bit Vista machine running Media Center. We use the camera for videoconferencing with relatives on different sides of the planet *and* for entertaining the kids.
The picture quality is excellent. The camera has great resolution and is able to capture at decent frame rates. The defaults work well out of the box in our home environment (no need to fiddle with the controls, but they do exist). The software also has the nifty ability to zoom and pan, which it can do because the image is large.
The LifeCam 2.0 software available from www.microsoft.com/hardware is simply amazing. It can be used to entertain kids locally or applied to videoconferencing transmissions. The software detects heads in the image and adds in 3D objects, e.g. hats, facemasks, animal faces, and it can add real-time distortions like grow-mouth; and then there are filter effects that change color and texture; and all the cool stuff from v1 of the software. It has our our pre-schoolers and their friends rolling around with laughter.
There are some rumblings in other reviews here about not being able to capture large pictures in high frame rates but it can do 640x480@30fps which is better than TV.
We had some issues with image tearing, but that turned out to be due to the USB controller on the motherboard and could happen to any USB webcam. We bought a PCI card with some extra USB ports on and it fixed the problem.
For comparison, I should mention we own two Macs and have iSight cameras, one external and one integrated into a MacBook Pro. The image quality between the iSights and this camera is indistinguishable and until now I'd have said the iSight's were the best cameras around. The LifeCam software raises the bar on Apple's Photo Booth App, which applies basic filtering to the image, but doesn't do anything as smart as the 3D additions.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Best Webcam Available 2008 08
Comment: This webcam has all the capabilities you'd look for, and a very competitive price to boot. Take 7.2 MP photos and record video at 2 MP quality. I'm happy with the purchase.
Customer Rating:
Summary: I'm very pleased...
Comment: I bought this webcam to replace an extremely old (circa 1999) Logitech WebCam. Some of the other reviews here indicate that this webcam is junk, but I am very happy with it. Here's a few observations with respect to my own use and some of what I've read in other reviews here.
o Video Quality - I have no problem with it and have yet to have any "freezes". My guess is that freezes are more associated with network latency. I have not tried this over a LAN (very high speed local), but over a cable modem that is 7MBit down, 384k up. You have to take that into account before you blame the webcam. My 384k up is not very fast, for a cable modem, but that's Time Warner for you. Up north (NY/CT area), my peers enjoy 3Mbit upstream! Ugh!
o Software Install Location- Another reviewer brought this up. Who cares? This isn't a 4GB first person shooter, it's a few megs of drivers that mostly need to go under the windows folder anyhow. Non-issue.
o Software Install "eXPerience" - glad to say I had no issues. Install the software, plug in the camera when it asks, and I was good to go. I'm running XP Pro on a 3GHz "single core" (old school? heh) CPU.
o Application Compatibility - It's working great with both Windows Live Messenger and Skype (latest version, 3.8.0.115).
o Built-In Mic - This was a nice surprise for me. I recently purchased a SUB Logitech ClearChat Pro headset, but the built-in mic of this webcam lets me be headset free. I ask everyone I videochat with, can you hear me okay? (Answer: Yes), and do you hear feedback or your voice? (Answer: No). So I am very pleased. Of course, you can set Windows Live Messenger and Skype to use a headset microphone or other device, you don't have to use the built-in mic.
o "The Software" - Okay, the software that comes with the webcam is very basic. But if you want something better, you can get it for free from Microsoft. XP has "Windows Movie Maker" built in, you don't NEED to use the webcam software. Or go install the Windows Media Encoder, that's another free option. I've used both no problem.
In summary, I am very pleased with the performance of the VX-7000. You can record video at 640x480 or 800x600 without problem, and that's pretty good in my opinion. After all, 800x600 is better resolution than DVD video (720x480). If you need more, I don't think you should be looking at a webcam! I think, bottom line, this product is meant for and good at its intended use - video chatting over the internet. I would buy this again.
Customer Rating:
Summary: VX-7000 Webcam -Hi res images low frame rate (over cable modem)
Comment: I'm new to the webcam world but have viewed other webcams. I had high expectations with Microsoft's currently 'best available' webcam. The camera does come through in a few important areas: Image quality is VERY good and auto-focus works great. This cam works great in rooms with low light. The UI (User Interface) is easy and quick to make sense. The only down-side is trade-off between image quality and frame-rate. Keeping moderate quality imaging brings the FR down a little. I've also experienced occasional frozen frames for about 30 - 60 seconds -a little annoying. The interface does allow you to drop resolution for higher frame-rate... Again, it's all about trade-offs!
I do reccomend this webcam!
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