Non-iSight suggestions for iChatAV?

mweier

Pixel Farmer
Hey - i'm interested in getting a digital web cam for my mom so she can see our upcoming baby via iChat AV. She's on a G4 Cube & I've got a dual 2Ghz G5.

As I'm planning to buy a firewire DV Cam (CanonZR80) I won't be buying an iSight for myself (I assume that should work, right?).

As for her, I'm wondering if anyone has any recommendations of cheaper-than-iSight webcams that they've used with Macam or something. Basically any and all recommendations for sub-$100 webcams. They've got a lot of cameras in their supported cameras page but I'm hoping for more real-world usage experiences. Also, the G4 Cube should be capable of running iSight AV, right? She's on a 256Kbps cablemodem if that matters, too..

Thanks!
 
cool - thanks for the link to the 1394 competitors - I didn't know there were any (apparently Apple's done a good job of promoting their iSight, eh?).

Couple more questions
1.) It seems that only the iSight comes with microphone (though iBotPro does too apparently). Do you have any ideas about microphones? I don't think my mom has a microphone with her G4 Cube.

2.) Does anyone else have any experience with the cheaper (and crappier) USB webcams via Macam?
 
1.) Check if the G4 Cube has a line-in jack. If so, you can actually get any microphone. If it doesn't have it, you should pay $39 for a USB Griffin iMic.
2.) I got an aiptek qtcam USB long time ago and it worked fine with Macam. That cam was a little gift from a company as some sort of advertisment. So, I guess it must be very cheap. But I wasn't using it with ichatav (it wasn't available in those those) but yahoo and Macam and it worked just fine.
Btw, currently I am using a d-link firewire webcam. It's called something 350C. I paied less than $10 for it on ebay and believe it's not even more expensive at the regular store. Check out if you can find it. Works really fine, but doesn't have an autofocus. You can also use search. I posted the info of this cam in some older threads.
 
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