[Ti] about isight

[ursus at mac.com]

> 
> On Thursday, August 21, 2003, at 02:42  pm, <ursus at mac.com> wrote:
> 
>> the Philips 740K (Which has a  megapixel CCD but costs only $69)
> 
> This is USB only (don't know if that bottlenecks the quality of the
> vide) and has no mic built in.

IT DOES HAVE A MIC BUILT-IN

> I agree with the message that as a CCD, the iSight isn't great.
> 
> However, is the iSIght a useful all in one web chat solution for people
> with Ti Books?
> 
> I think so.
> 
> To be honest I think they should have put a better CCD in it and priced
> it at $200

I did not say it was not useful.... But $149 for a cam that is blown away by
a $69 Philips?  That is a lot to ask.

I knew it was 640X 480 when I bought it. But there are many other factors in
performance and I figured Apple had made the 640X 480 really work well. But
they didn't. (On the other hand Philips really tweaked the USB performance
of their cam and it performs better in frame rate than any FireWire cam I
know about.  Of course if the bus is saturated it won't achieve optimum
speeds, but that is true for FireWire as well)

Also, I travel with a small tripod and use a larger one at home. There isn't
a way for the iSight to be mounted on a tripod.   That could be remedied..
But I had to vote on what they delivered. I told the guy at the Apple Store
that I would try the NEXT iSight but the current one was just too poor to
allow me to switch from my Philips.  BTW the Philips is the 6th brand I have
owned and I have 2 of them, both perform beautifully.

I am on my 28th personal Mac and have specified literally thousands of Macs
to be purchased in my work. So I am a big Apple fan.  Apple deserves no
praise for the performance characteristics of iSight.  They do deserve big
praise from the standpoint of its industrial design, though.

*Ursus*

PS, AS I said, there is not one good performing FireWire cam on the market.
I have seen them all and all have been very disappointing.   iSight did not
break this tradition.. which really surprised me.