Cheap, Excellent Webcams
Most folks don’t know this, but ever since Apple came out with the OS X 10.4.9 update, certain newer, “UVC-compatible” webcams can be plugged into your older Mac, and they will work right away with iChat.
Why would anybody bother? To stay in touch with family-members… To share love across the miles. “Hey Grandma! Look at Junior’s new tattoos!” Once it’s set up, it’s free forever, and it works whether you have a Windows PC or a Mac, as long as you have a fast Internet connection.
I set this up all of the time, and it’s always gratifying to see family-members cooing at each other across the miles. Holiday gifts being opened simultaneously across a continent are a big hit in our household.
Tell everybody in your family to get a webcam (see below), and then they should all go to AIM.com and get a free screen name. Once everybody has e-mailed each other with the new screen-names, then the Mac users should use iChat and the Windows family-members should download the newest verson of AOL Instant Messenger. Why? Because it’s the simplest way to share vision AND sound between the two platforms.
Ever since Apple stopped production on the iSight webcam, prices have skyrocketed for used iSights on eBay. Some have asking-prices as high as $299! Very discouraging.
I’m still doing research on which webcams are guaranteed to work, but here is one that is known to work, and is highly rated:
If your laptop, eMac or iMac already has a microphone, then the Xbox Live Vision webcam ($35.99 on Amazon.com) is a good choice. To see if your computer already has a microphone built-in, pull down the blue Apple menu, go to System Preferences, then to Sound, and then to Input. If an “Internal microphone” shows up, you’re in business.
If your Mac does NOT have a built-in microphone, then there are other choices for very little money:
There are good things being said about the Logitech Quickcam for Notebooks Pro, or the Logitech Quickcam Fusion.
You can also use Logitech’s support-page to see which of their models support “UVC”, which is required for proper, driver-free iChat compatibility. This one looks very nice, and for only $41.40 after rebate.
Once everybody in the family has their free chat names from AIM.com, then all Mac users should fire up their Address Book software and add the chat names for all relevant people. Then, fire up iChat and answer a few questions until iChat is up and running. On the Buddy List window, hit the “+” button on the lower left and start adding people to the Buddy List.
Hopefully, once the Windows folks have added everybody to their AIM Buddy List as well, you should see a nice green camera next to one of your buddies’ names. Double-click on it, and they will hear a “brrring!” sound. They’ll also see a window pop open, saying that you are requesting a chat-session. If they click “Accept”, then the video-chatting can begin!
April 26th, 2007 at 7:55 am
Hi Tony,
Great post. We get this question all the time over at Eyejot. The iSight was/is a excellent camera, but it’s crazy to think that people are paying $300+ dollars for them now on eBay.
One other suggestion I’d make, if you have a camera that doesn’t work under 10.4.9, is to try installing the MACAM software/component ( http://webcam-osx.sourceforge.net/ ) . Another option, which most people don’t think about, but works great, is to use their firewire camcorder. Just hook it up, put it on camera/record mode, and it should work!
Also, to pitch my own product, people with webcams should checkout EYEJOT.COM!
Eyejot is basically a video webmail system, allowing you to send video messages to people the same way you’d send email. They don’t have to be online at the same time as you, and you can access your eyejot inbox from any web browser. The best thing about it is that it works on both windows and mac (and linux), and doesn’t require you to install any software. The only thing you need is a web browser and the Adobe flash player.
Daryn