You can use the WebCam III without installing any of the bundled software once the drivers are installed. If Windows Imaging is installed, you can grab still images by pressing the button on the top left of the camera. Most video related software (NetMeeting included) would be able to see the WebCam III and capture from it as well. That said, the choice of software for bundling is pretty interesting but it does leave a few holes. Here's a look at what you get and my suggestions on making the package complete.

Polaroid PhotoMAX by ArcSoft

As the name suggests, this is a quick way of taking snapshots. You watch a live video stream and click on a button to capture when you get that just-so moment. After which you can start touching up the photograph. You can manipulate things like contrast, brightness and even distort the image in various ways. I never did get comfortable with the user interface but then again I didn't use it for long either. I just use Photoshop (or PaintShop Pro would do nicely.) Overall, it's good enough to touch up your snaps if you don't want to spend extra money buying software. It'll probably do for most.

Webcam Control

This little tool is quite handy. It lets you capture both still images and video sequences. It also maintains an album for you. I used it to learn how changing the various driver settings affected the image quality. I personally found this a whole lot more useful than PhotoMAX.

Webcam Monitor

This is the most interesting (not sure if it is as useful) bit of software you get. It lets you use the WebCam III as a motion detector! I can only think of it as being useful to watch what goes on at your office after work. In which case I would suggest covering the green LED which signals activation with some black adhesive tape. Once you set it up and activate it (you do get a configurable grace period to get out of the scene) the computer will start recording video sequences whenever it sees movement. It can also email you pictures taken at the time that movement was detected. You can configure how sensitive it should be. Another option is to let it snap a picture at a regular interval. These pictures can also be uploaded to a FTP site which in turn may make it available in a website! Voila! You have your very own web camera... While I don't see this as Creative Labs' grand entry into the security business, it is a "fun" thing and it can prove quite useful.

Webcam32 (not part of the bundle)

Why am I bringing software not included in the bundle into the review? Because this bit of software probably should have been included, if only in its demo version at least. It is available as a freely downloadable demo and is quite cheap to register. What it does is, it lets you turn your video capture device (the WebCam III, in this case) into an actual web camera. While Webcam Monitor does this function to some extent, it does not support streaming based on Java and/or Real Video like Webcam32 does. You can still get it to upload a new picture into a web server every so often using FTP. You can also get it to serve as a mini web-server but this works only with Netscape browsers. Pretty impressive! Definitely something I would call worth-it-ware. You can download it from

http://www.kolban.com/webcam32/