Microsoft LifeCam VX-3000 Pack

I bought this product several months ago for $49.99. It was a steal at that price since 1 webcam runs for anywhere from $35-$80 at Bestbuy depending on the quality. This combo has some cool features such as the call live which links to MSN website. It has a microphone with it which is an added bonus. I can sit conveniently on top of any monitor or desktop. It can easily be focused simply by turning the lens. It has a 1.3 megapixel digital camera in it to take some still pictures. It also has a cute feature where you can put animation characters above your head such as stars, snow, clouds, falling leaves etc. Overall, this is a very good webcam. It is a perfect gift or for those families who want to keep in touch with each other constantly.

Overall, a good product for the money. Software is easy to load and relatively intuitive. However, my son has an Apple laptop and apparently one can't connect a PC to an Apple computer for video, only text, through [...] which is the Microsoft webcam software default. We also tried AOL instant messenger with no luck. I was able to connect just fine to my wife's computer running Windows Vista and mine running Windows XP Professional via live.com. The cameras have good focus, decent color, good low light capability, and steady scanning during movement. The focus is a little cheesy with the lens just loosely screwing in and out, and I would have liked autofocus now that I have two of these. Depth of field is good though so not much adjustment is needed. Overall, it will work just fine for anyone using a PC, but we wasted a lot of time before realizing that Microsoft apparently didn't recognize Apple and hasn't apparently made a compatible way to link a PC to one for video, only text messaging.

Simple to install and simple to operate. Too bad it competes for other .dll space. Had to uninstall it to get the computer from crashing again and again. Haven't had time to check it out without Microsoft Messenger...

I installed the software on my Acer 3610 Laptop and then plugged in the camera and that's where things went downhill. The WinXP OS wouldn't recognize the camera and kept asking my to install the drivers. I eventually determined that there was updated software for the camera from Microsoft. That didn't help. I wasn't able to get the camera to work at all. It may have had a conflict with my Brother MFC-8220 USB printer. There's no way I'm plugging this into my new laptop without backing the system up.The camera worked without a problem on my wife's tower. I did expect more from the performance of the camera overall. I've since done a bunch of research on cameras and found this to be on the mid-low end scale.The button on the top is a PITA. Everytime you pick it up MSN starts up.Not related to the product specifically but to my experience installing it: Other websites suggested running a utility to get the OS to forget about all USB devices. Once I did that most of my USB products wouldn't work (keyboard, external drives, printer/scanner) - again they were asking for drivers. Fortunately I had a restore point that I could go back to and that un-did all of the mess.

So, I went ahead and bought the two pack of web cams, after reading the reviews already posted, which seemed to indicate that with Windows Vista, I would have a problem with installation. And I did. I installed to two laptops (both less than a year old - running windows vista service pack 1) and it installed flawlessly on the newer laptop (that had service pack 1 already installed on it out of the box). The laptop that was upgraded to service pack 1, had multiple problems during installation. I finally was able to get the video working, but the microphone feature would not work. After trial and error, going through the control panel to the device manager, I was able to manually get the microphone to work by selecting 'usb microphone' or something like that for the unknown device and then it worked great.The picture and audio are both really good, especially considering I paid $50 for two webcams. They work great with the new windows live messenger. I took one star off in the review because of the difficulty with installation.

This webcam was a great purchase. Very easy to setup and use. We bought the two pack so our babies can see and talk to their grandparents across the country. It works with AIM as well as the Microsoft Live chat and starts up automatically when you request a video session. Great for the price.

nice product - have been trying to use for 4 days now. can't get it to work. can't find enough instructions.

I bought the double pack as a mothers day gift for my mom and my mother-in-law and they both have said that this is the greatest gift ever. Neither one of them are very savvy on the computer and they were both able to get the camera set up easily. They both love the fact that we can go on skype for free and they can see and talk to their grandsons. This is especially good when they are talking to our two year old who is very animated and hard to understand over the phone. Our boys also love the fact that they get to see their grand parents and show them things that they normally would have to try and describe to them. This is a great way to stay in touch with your family without running up a phone bill.