Labtec Webcam 1200
Camera purchased and tested in January 2008. Nice plastic quality for it's price. The grip has rubber elements for better holding, although it is pretty bad designed. Better to put it on your LCD monitor or notebook, on flat places may fall on a side, so it will be pretty hard to fix on a CRT monitor or on a desk. The camera rotates about 40 degrees in each side, so it can be adjusted on angles. Has an old fashion manual focus, the red circle on the camera. So you have to be careful not to move very much during using, or adjust the focus all the time, which is very annoying if you are using it for more than 1 hour per day. Image quality is ok for its price when the light is bright, in low light things are much worse. It may be a solution for you to check the Low Light option in the menus, but you will have to pay with a much lower picture sharpness. Labtec 1200 is using the cheapest 100k or CIF (352x288) sensor at 30fps. It's possible, with interpolating, to use the camera for making still images at 640x480, but the quality is so bad that you can take an image and resize it by yourself. The image is losing it's sharpness at the corners pretty badly, I guess it's because of the optics, hardly about 2mm plastic glass lens. No microphone or headset included, but who can ask for it at this price. Package contains a CD with drivers and some awful and old software from ArcSoft (VideoImpression 2.0, PhotoImmpression 5.0, WebCam Companion, Magic-i 3), a short instruction in 27 languages in form of a small book (must notice the good translation, at least in the languages I know), and the camera, all packed in a nice small box colored in red, black and white.
Pros:
* Very cheap
* Snapshot button
* 2 years warranty
Cons:
* Bad grip for horizontal objects
* Plastic grip
* Bad in low light
* Manual focus
Verdict: If you are using it just for fun, in a well illuminated office/room and you are short of money - it's an acceptable choice.