Product: Kensington VideoCAM
Reviewed on: 10/12/99
Reviewed by: Justin
Rated: ***.5/ 5
The main reason that I'm not ecstatic over this camera is that its size and feature set makes it a great choice for a webcam. At least it would be if the camera software wasn't so clunky in this area. The problem is that there's no small little background application for taking pictures and uploading it to a server. I downloaded a small control strip module called StripCam for this but when I tried to use it, the computer crashed. I'm assuming that StripCam can't find the USB device. The only way is to keep the Kensington software running in the background, which takes 10 MB of RAM. You can window shade the program to keep your computer running quickly but for some users, giving up this RAM is not much of an option.
Using the VideoCAMWorks program, I set up the computer to take timed shots of the room. It takes four (or more) shots and then loops. I'd have preferred the option to take just 1 shot and loop. Also, while the camera saves the images to a user defined folder, it doesn't allow you options to name each picture (i.e. webcam.jpg, it's just webcam). It also offers no Internet services like FTP. I'm going to write an AppleScript with MacOS 9 (when I get it) to upload the images in the folder every half hour.
The VideoCAMWorks program also takes over the sound port even though the VGA and VideoCAM have no mic (the S-VGA model does). This is annoying as it means that I can't use certain application while the VideoCAMWorks is running, even though, as a webcam, this software should be running constantly. CU-See Me comes with this camera but to get the serial number, you have to enter the VideoCAM serial number into a web page on cuseemeworld.com. However, the web pages is not found. I'm assuming that this'll be fixed soon. When I get it, I'll append my comments to this review.
Minor quibble: there's a shutter button on the camera for taking instant pictures. This only works when the software's running.
Amended 10/24/99: Found a shareware program named CoolCam that works with this camera. Yay! It seems to work pretty well, uses half the RAM of the VideoCAMWorks program and is much more Mac in its interface.
