All the specs and all the software will amount to nada if it doesn't deliver when in use. Luckily for all concerned, it does. One of the most frequent complaints I have got is of bad video quality and the video being red tinged. Almost without exception, this is due to bad or insufficient lighting. The type of lighting has to be factored in as well. For example, fluorescent lighting needs a bit of extra care to synch it with the power grid frequency to avoid fluctuations in brightness. Sunlight is by far and wide the best possible case. Still images presented no problem once you adjusted the focus (by twisting the focusing ring) to match the subject.

Video capture was also quite smooth. Assuming you don't have any other background activity and your hard drive and CPU are up to par, you will be capturing video to AVI files without any problems. The image quality was not the best I've seen. It is, however, good in relation to the price and should not be a reason to put you off unless you want to use the input for professional work.

Just as it was beginning to seem that all is rosy and well with the WebCam III, I have to mention one very annoying problem. On some machines (I have not yet located the exact reason for this) the WebCam III would refuse to be detected on a reboot. But it is detected if the computer has been powered off for a while and then powered back on. This does not seem to happen if it is attached to a powerd USB hub. It is possible that some component within the Webcam is not initializing on the restart since power is being continuously provided. It can be fixed without a shutdown by unplugging the USB cable and re-plugging it, but this is annoying especially if your USB ports are in the back of the computer. Creative is aware of this (reports of the problem have been posted on their support news group, news.creative.com) but has yet to issue a fix.