The Bottom Line: The Logitech camera's low light filter, color boost, audio quality and video compression capabilities alone make this webcam a good buy, not to mention all the IM services.

Before purchasing the Logitech I used an Ezonics EZcam for my desktop. The Ezonics EZcam was ok if you had plenty of light, but it doesn't hold a candle to the Logitech STX.

After being hassled with having to turn on all the lights for nighttime video IMing, the low light filter and color boost controls were the icing on the cake for me. The video email fucntion that is part of the software is also phenomal in that it compresses video files to 1MB or less depending on the length (file size) of your clip. There is a limit however, I've been compressing video files sizes from 6-10MB to 1MB without any issues or major video degradation. Anything more than that and you will have file degradation. As a matter of fact it will inform you that it is unable to completely compress and optimize, and give you the option to continue. I did this with a 21MB video file the result was unusable.

It comes with two mounting options, one is a simple base, the other a long flexible surface gripper. A fairly sensitive microphone is built right into the cam and works works great during video broadcast.

I've had this webcam for over 3 years now without a problem. I've dropped it numerous times with no ill effect.