In computer news this week:

A review of the new Intel Pocket PC Camera, or Santa Claus brought me just what I wanted ...

I've had a web cam for the past couple years that works quite well; it's attached to my computer and it will take good pictures of just about anything, and it even will do little movies. But being attached permanently to my computer, I can only take pictures of things that are close to the webcam in my office.

As digital computer cameras have evolved, I've been looking for one that would take good pictures without costing a small fortune. Many of these new cameras cost several hundred dollars or more, and can take very high resolution pictures. But I wanted something that could take good resolution pictures, and lots of them. The biggest problem with slow loading web pages are the high resolution graphics that take forever to load.

A lot of the digital cameras I looked at could only take maybe 30 pictures or so. Then when I was Christmas shopping at Doug Hurd's favorite store, I came across the new Intel Pocket PC Camera, and I have been pretty amazed with it.

This is a new generation of computer camera, which you can use as a regular webcam, but you can also unplug it from your computer and go out in the world and take good quality pictures of anything - lots of pictures - up to 128 in high quality 24 bit 16 million colors vga mode, over 200 in a lower mode, or even record up to 2 minutes of live video. It has 8 megs of memory. This quality is actually better than my traditional polaroid instamatic camera. It actually looks like a little camera, comes with its own camera carrying case, and works just like a camera - point and click. When you use it as a webcam it's powered by your computer. When you unplug it and use it as a digital camera its battery powered.

With the pocket pc camera you can set the timer mode to take one or more pictures automatically in ten seconds so you can jump back into the picture with the rest of your friends.

The picture quality is very good, and I'm very satisfied with it. But what I find really amazing about the Intel Pocket Pc Camera, aside from it's unbelieveable low price of $ 139.00, is the incredible amount of usable software Intel bundles with it.

You get photo editing software so you can improve the quality of your pictures, or add titles and special effects to them. You get software to let you use Microsoft Net meeting on the Internet so you can see and talk to people anywhere in the world. You get the Intel movie builder so you can edit your videos and make professional presentations. There's also software to create a web page with your pictures, or even add a video clip. Software to add pictures to your email; software to categorize and store all your creations.

And just for fun, there's some incredible games that come with it - taking you into a new dimension of computer games. No more mice or joy sticks - this is almost virtual reality as the camera detects your motions and you actually interact with the game through it, dribbling and dunking basket balls, playing handball, bursting bubbles, and one wonderful game that creates incredible computer graphics effects to the beat of music, or you can put your favorite music cd in and dance to that. Sort of like having strobe lights, lava lamps, and a digital studio discoteque in your computer.

There's also a library of actual photo examples taken with the camera, and clipart images you can use.

So what don't you get for $ 139? You don't get a flash, so you have to be aware of low light situations. But the camera can sort of compensate for that, and the photo editing software can improve the quality. You don't get a zoom lens- just an adjustable focus setting to infinity, but it works for me.

I rate the Intel pocket pc camera as a very good product both for home and business use, and I'll be putting some pictures on my website soon for viewing.

For Raw Bytes, this is Frank Delaney

POB 222 Spangle, Wa 99031 (509)245-3736 Email: fdspokane@aol.com