I purchased a new Microsoft LifeCam VX-6000 over the web from BestBuy.com and was thoroughly displeased. Upon plugging it into my server, it picked up a USB 2.0 device, which is normal (i.e. there was no driver for it to utilize). So I installed the software, and no matter what I did, I could not get the webcam to see the drivers. I tried several different procedures for installing the software and the webcam; no go. So I’m taking it back to try another one today. We’ll see how that goes.

Update @ 11:35 am

And there’s more: my sweet wife took the cam back to a Best Buy near us to exchange it this morning. You would think this would be simple enough. Nope. Apparently, because I used a gift card on BestBuy.com to order my cam, they had to fully refund the cam back to my account in two parts, $8.00 for the part I actually paid, and the $100.00 back to the gift card, which they will now send in the mail as they had to reissue a new one. So the cam didn’t work, they took it back, and now instead of just exchanging it for another of the same product, they must reissue a card? I’m confused on that one. Not a huge deal to wait, just as long as I get the $100.00 card back. So do not use a Best Buy gift card on BestBuy.com, in case you have to return the product.

Update @ 3:02 pm on 7/13/2007 – I have now obtained the VX-3000 model, which is half the price of the VX-6000, and it works well. I plugged it in and Windows XP found the drivers right away. It does not have the wide-screen lens, but it does what I need it to. The one drawback I can see so far is the software seems to be very limited on its ability to efficiently change brightness, contrast, gamma, flicker, etc. Some times I would change settings and it wouldn’t take