iVista has it all: a simple interface, impressive image quality, and a breadth of features that ought to cost well above the modest price. When you register, Inetcam creates a Web site for your surveillance images. Video is processed and stored on your PC, then streamed up to your site for on-demand, point-to-point viewing as a Java applet. Of course, even at low resolution with high compression, multiple visitors will yield slow performance if you have a narrow upload connection, but for one or two viewers, the product is outstanding.

Using motion detection, you can adjust sensitivity, show precisely where in the frame to watch for motion, and instruct iVista to respond by playing audio, sending an e-mail alert, FTP-ing a file, or running a program. You can upload a constant video stream from your camera and also instruct iVista to post video clips captured during motion alerts. The software streams audio from many sources, including the camera or external microphone, and even includes support for viewing on wireless handheld devices. For single-camera users, iVista is unbeatable.