Linksys WVC200 Web Cam

This Linksys camera is a well engineered innovative product. It is an excellent value for this price point.
Expect to spend 2-5x more for a comparable or better camera. The wvc200 (or wvc210 new model) work very well for what they were designed. However there are some shortcomings. The main problem is that they use Active X, probably the worst interface possible known for it's inherent security problems. By using active X you limited to using a PC with Internet Explorer to take advantage of many of it's features. It is possible to view on a Apple (or Linux box)by using MPEGJ, but then there is no motion recording or email sent. This is the most important feature for me. I purchased this camera to monitor our vacation home. I wanted an email sent with video clip when it detected motion when we are home. I'm out of luck there. I use mac. I ended up buying a cheap PC laptop to use camera but not the most ideal solution. Not sure why Linksys would use such an inadequate protocol such as Active X, makes no sense to me. I wish there was an optical zoom built in to this camera but I know that's asking too much for a product at this price. Video quality is acceptable, not great, and seems to vary from one camera to another. I consider myself a computer novice. Installation and setup for me was a challenge. It would be fair to say that I don't think this is not a plug and play camera. It took a bit of tweaking to get camera to play nice with my FTP server and my NAS box. Setting up to wireless network was easy especially with LCD ip address on camera. I have some Linux background so that helped. If you don't know the difference between Internet explorer and windows explorer please do yourself a favor and have someone set this up for you. Did I mention Camera based on Active X protocol? That means if you use any browser besides IE you have no AUDIO. This applies to all OS X and Ubuntu users as you might get video but no sound and that is by design not a defect.

Linksys/Cisco no longer sells the WVC200 and has upgraded to the WVC210. Although the color has been greatly improved on the newer model - gone is the IR sensitivity of the older model. This is unfortunate as I used these to monitor my children overnight. Software and setup is not the most straightforward and could be improved but once you get the hang of it the ease of use improves. Overall good camera for the price point.