I picked up one of these at Staples recently. I chose it mainly because it alone out of the display models seemed to offer the ability to swivel vertically; I also figured it'd be useful for business trips and the like.

I attempted to install it on a fairly late-model and capable machine, a dual P4 Xeon 2GHz 1GB RAM machine running Windows XP Professional SP1. This machine has been in use for a little less than a year now, and functions as my home server. It's very fast and stable, and I've never had any problems with it whatsoever.

The drivers and other software that came with the camera took three attempts to load successfully. Let me just say at this point that I've been a computer programmer for the past seven years or so, and I fiddled around with PCs extensively before that. I followed the instructions to the letter; the software was just buggy.

Finally, the camera was successfully recognized by the system. I used the supplied configuration tool to check the image quality, and was very disappointed. The configuration interface offers very few choices for tweaking the image quality, which was horrible. I'm talking about excessive fragmentation, very poor color quality and handling of normal room lighting, the works. I was expecting much better, even from a notebook webcam. I was barely able to distinguish the features on my face.

Next, the BSOD (Blue Screen Of Death) problem began. It happened first at random, when I was just viewing images through the camera but not adjusting settings. It quickly escalated to the point where any time I attempted to change any setting, I had to reboot my machine. After the fifth time, I uninstalled the software and prayed that my machine hadn't been permanently destabilized; luckily, everything checks out okay.

This machine is not at fault; it's definitely the software that came with the camera. The machine is constantly kept up to date with the latest patches, and is firewalled and virus protected at all times. Not only did the software crash an otherwise perfectly stable machine (which is actually an impressive feat on Windows XP) but it was the usual badly-designed, intrusive, can't-shut-it-off dreck that Creative Labs always supplies for their products.
Creative Labs, in my extensive experience with them, makes awful software but great hardware. The bad image quality of this camera came as a shock.

My advice is to give this one a miss, unless you're looking to add that perfect touch of blue to your home or office!