Intro
If you've got
friends or relatives you seldom see and
would like to (and vice versa), a webcam may be the answer. But can a
model
costing little more than a couple of pints and a pie be
anything other than pants? We check out MSI's
oh-so-affordable StarCam 370i to find out.
Webcams for personal use seem to have been around for ever but they
only really began selling in serious numbers when
support for
them was added by the big instant text chat
services,
notably MSN (now Windows Live Messenger), Yahoo Messenger
and AOL Instant Messenger. And that growth
begets growth - the more people there are using
webcams, the more reason there is for others to want to as well.
Another significant boost for webcams happened recently when
support
was added by Skype in the software for the company's
fast-growing
free PC-to-PC voice-over-internet service. Now,
as
well as letting you make and take free virtual telephone calls
with PCs, Skype offers live video
support. The webcam
option arrived with the beta of Skype's version 2 software but
has
progressed since then - the latest full-release
has reached
V2.5.
With video support in all the key voice and chat
services, there's probably never been a better time to buy a webcam.
If, that is, you've got friends or relatives you seldom see
and
would like to (and vice versa). Setting one up should
be trivial - though as we'll show, there can be unexpected
problems - and the cost needn't be great and certainly not
enough to put you off the idea.
The model we're looking at today, MSI's StarCam 370i, is
available for just £11.89. Okay, that doesn't include VAT
but the tax only adds £2.08 and brings the
total to a
relatively inconsequential £13.97 for a model that
even has
a built-in microphone and can double as a security
cam. Such affordability is especially
significant when a webcam is one of the few products
that tend to get
bought two at a time, or even in threes. A pair
would set you
back under £28 and three would cost less than £45.
And, if you're a
HEXUS.community
regular and
buy
from SCAN, there would
be no delivery charge for a pair or a set of three.
That must sound tempting and, on paper, it is. But
there's no
point spending 45 quid or 28 or just 14 if the product is
pants.
So the question we're setting out to answer is - is it? Pants,
that is.
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