More microsoft news to counter balance our Apple jerk-off fest yesterday.

Microsoft's NX-6000 is a high resolution webcam meant for laptops. We're talking about a 2 megapixel resolution video stream, which amounts to a 1600 by 1200 image. Yowser. It'll also take interpolated 7 megapixel stills. (Fakey, since it just blows up the lower res images to take up more disk space.) That bests the 1.3-megapixel camera in the Logitech HD QuickCam Ultra Vision by some amount.

There's more, so jump.

It has software pan/tilt controls, plus face tracking and video effects. Nothing like the cool alien head and bunny rabbit ears effects you'll find on Logitech cameras. More like "snow, stars and flowers" says the press release. Um, ok.

The lens collapses into its housing so you can throw it into your bag without smudging or scratching. There's also a "Simple attachment base enabling a webcam to be easily secured with just one hand." Heh. $100 in November.

For the impoverished, there's also a $30 VX-1000 camera, with a 640 by 480 video resolution. On par with the iSight built into Macbooks. –Brian Lam

Microsoft LifeCam NX-6000 [Microsoft]

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