Yesterday I bought a Creative Labs PC-CAM 880 at CompUSA for about $150. It is a 3 megapixel "take it with you" digital camera that connects via USB. It can also work as a webcam. I bought it so I could collaborate with people in a remote office over WebEx.

Well, the camera's pictures are "ok." I guess I don't have a lot to compare it to, but this could function as a "quick picture" camera when we want to e-mail friends and family pictures of my 4-month old daughter. In fact, it will work great for that. As for the lasting-family-memory pictures, I think I'll stay with film until I get a higher-resolution camera.

The other part of the camera that is actually a bit maddening is that it takes about 2 seconds to take the picture. You actually have to hold the camera still during those two seconds. If anything, this is the most disappointing part of it all.

Actually, the most disappointing part of this is that webex didn't let me share my camera, even though it has a 'video' tab... so I never used it for collaboration. All I did was take pictures of the whiteboard after the meeting so I could send them the pictures.