Recently I have received a nice present from Microsoft (yes, I do receive some cool stuff from them, since I’m a Microsoft Student Partner) – a Microsoft webcam.

I must admit I’m not an expert in web cameras, although I’m using my laptop built-in webcam very intensively, since I’m living in the UK now away from my parents who are in Russia and whom I call each day with Skype. Anyway, the video quality of my built-in web camera is pretty awful, but I wasn’t aware of that before, I mean there was a noise and the video at times wasn’t very smooth, but I didn’t pay much attention to that.

However, after unpacking and installing the Microsoft camera, I was simply blown away by the video quality. They claim this camera supports HD with 720p, but since I’m not in the HDTV bandwagon, I can’t tell you what it is, you’d better ask Wikipedia about tis. Anyway, the quality is superb, moreover it supports different resolutions up to 1280x720.

Before (with my laptop built-in camera) the video looked like this:

But now it looks like this :-):

Please, note I haven’t adjusted any settings and the resolution is just 640x430.

Also, the camera has good auto-focusing, meaning that if you move around, back and forward it will automatically focus, to illustrate this feature, I placed a sheet of paper in front of my two cameras. I bet you can guess which image belongs to which camera.

Moreover, the came has a built-in microphone that appears to be even better than my cheap external Logitech mike.

The only glitch I have found so far is its fixing mechanism, I mean perhaps it fits perfectly regular displays, but I don’t think the fix fits my laptop very well, although the camera fixed on it, but I have a fear that it’s not fixed firmly enough.

To learn more about this lovely camera follow this link.