The Logitech QuickCam Pro 3000 offered the best image quality of any camera we saw in this roundup. The friendly software is geared for novices and includes Webcam functions such as gallery organization and video e-mail, as well as motion detection, periodic still-image and video uploading, and live video streaming.

We hit some snags with image and video uploading, though. Both require that you have an account with SpotLife (www.spotlife.com), and only the first 30 days are free (subscriptions start at $2.99 per month for unlimited uploading, 10MB of storage, and 60 minutes of live video streaming). Our test machine connected via satellite broadband, which turned out to be incompatible with Logitech's bundled QuickCam 5.5. But SpotLife's own Logitech-compatible software worked, and a fix is coming in QuickCam 5.6.1.