Creative Webcam Notebook

Creative Labs offers a camera specifically designed for laptops. The Creative WebCam Notebook ($49.99) is the size of a double-A battery and clips onto a laptop screen. It's more expensive than the VisualStream or the iContact but offers higher video quality, with 640-by-480 resolution. It also uses a CMOS sensor.

We were much happier with the smoothness of movement when using the WebCam than when using the iContact or the VisualStream. The images this Creative device produced, however, turned out grainier than the others. The camera can swivel horizontally nearly 360 degrees, so you can capture the image of something happening in front of you rather than capturing yourself. The bundled software, Creative WebCam Monitor, includes a motion detection mode, a scheduler, and a feature for automatically uploading images to a Web site.