As I sit here and contemplate on what to write about this product, I notice the box out of the corner of my eye. Such a pretty box and I still remember the day I got this little digital still/video camera. It seems in life everything is circular, as what goes around come around... but I didn't know that the cliche could be applied to my QuickCam Pro.

Unlike any electronic gadget that I own, the QuickCam Pro has found its way right back in the box. Why? Well to be blatant and to the point, the Logitech QuickCam Pro sucks (and I don't hate things unless it really does deserve being hated). In fact, this is the ONLY computer product that I have bought, that I really was disappointed by... after all, I usually research and scour the Internet on everything that I buy, beforehand. Allow me to give you the smackdown on why you should look into other cameras, and why this camera really serves no purpose to anyone.

First off, when I bought this camera in 1999, one of its strong points was that it was ADVERTISED to do 640x480x16 high color motion capturing @ 30 frames per second. Using the given software, I attempted to repeat these numbers that Logitech spit out to the public. Using my trusty P2-450 with 128MB RAM (...which definitely exceeds the recommended Pentium 200 with 16MB RAM setup by Logitech...), I was able to crank out maybe 10 fps max.

What's the deal here? So being the computer geek that I am, I tried every single debugging and tweaking trick that I knew... still very sluggish and blurry picture quality. So I decided then to check out Logitech's Home Page. Still hopeful that I could capture at 30fps, I looked around the website for any technical documents on improving the QuickCam's performance. Nothing.

What to do next... so I gave them a call. Technical support answered somewhat promptly and told me that they are "looking into" the slow capture rates (I assume that many have complained) and have since stopped making them - which would've definitely explained the difficulty that I had locating and buying my QuickCam Pro, as they were rarely in stock... even in Logitech's own online store.

Well... I decided to wait, just in case that this was deemed to be a software issue as many of you know, bad drivers can make or break a computer component. So there I was taking still images of myself and editing the pics when version 4.15 of their software came out. All problems solved right? Nope. After installing, I tried again to replicate Logitech's numbers to no avail.

$120 for a camera that is only useful for still images? I fought myself to decide whether or not to return the QuickCam but I rationalized that getting a decent digital camera that does 640x480x16 high color was going to be more expensive. Plus, I was already using the camera to "scan" in some documents that I needed for a school presentation. (Still image quality is on par with other cameras and the capture software has built in image processing... which I used regularly to null any lighting or color issues.)

I was semi-happy for a few months, using the camera for school documents and personal images, until the fateful day that I upgraded to Windows 2000. Joy. The camera is not supported under Windows 2000. Not surprised, I went back to Logitech's website to see if they planned on releasing new drivers. "Sometime in May 2000" they say... well it was the middle of March. What to do... what to do?

Looking around to see what the competition was doing (like Intel), I noticed that no one had drivers for Windows 2000 for any camera. So I gave up and decided to wait. Weeks later, I read someone saying that QuickCams are supported natively in Windows 2000... Jumping to Logitech's site I found that there was "native support for QuickCam Home and QuickCam Web"... That made sense. Not. Microsoft was pushing Windows 2000 as a business workstation OS, while Logitech was pushing their low-end home user cameras. Not even their video conferencing camera (QuickCam VC) was supported.

As I was cursing at the screen, I noticed that there was a "new" QuickCam Pro model out... the "dark ring" QuickCam. Obviously they started to make the QuickCam Pro again so I checked the "new" features and specifications. What do you know... they stopped mentioning the 30 frames per second capture rate. They actually don't even mention any reference to capture rates anymore. I was not and still am not surprised.

So... still sitting in the box it came in, I will keep waiting for new drivers to come out for Windows 2000 just in case they address the issue with the frame rates. Until then though, I do not recommend getting any Logitech QuickCam product.

**Update**
My friend has purchased and received his QuickCam Pro - "dark ring" version. I went over to check it out and none of the previous issues were resolved. Still very slow video capture at 640x480...not supported under Windows 2000. By the way, video capture at the lower resolutions was fine but you'd go blind trying to watch them (applies to both my camera and the new one).

The camera itself is the same. Besides the dark ring, the camera came with a cheap Labtec LVA-330 microphone, and more image/video editing software. The image editing software, MGI PhotoSuite II, worked fine but the video editing software, MGI VideoWave II, served no purpose but to add cool effects to the microscopic video captures...

Finally, one REALLY useless extra that you get with this "dark ring" version is the DigitalRadar home security software. Basically, when it detects movement, the camera will start recording... the images were so blurry that even O.J. Simpson could've gotten away with murder in front of this "video camera".



Recommended: No