Last year, someone gave me this el cheapo camera that I'd seen being hawked at Virgin Megastore under the Philips brand name, selling for $20.00. Of course, now that I'm posting about it, it's nowhere to be found on either the Virgin or Philips websites.
I guess both were embarrassed by it.
Anyway, this is it. Here too. Mine looks like the one pictured in the second link.
Installing the XP driver for the software was the first bad sign. It called it a driver for Toy Camera! I did a screensnap of that, but forgot to save it before rebooting to get the driver working. But I have other proof:
Ah, so that wasn't an error in Installer labeling!
Even worse:
Uh-oh. They all agree: Toy Camera.
Prior to installing the driver, I took three test pics. Then I discovered the damned Arcsoft software to pull photos off the camera required more free hard drive space than I have right now (shut up!).
So I decided to see if I could pull them off manually via File Explorer with just the driver.
Whoops, no.
Because when this sucker is plugged in via USB, it goes into webcam mode! And apparently wipes out whatever was in its wee storage area.
A sample of images:
The camera was lying down near my crotch and pointing up at me. That's the only self-portrait of me you're about to get in this blog!
Another sample:
That's the stinking LifeDrive on my desk.
Now I play with your head:
I pointed it at the monitor to produce the traditional infinite regression.
I don't know how Philips got away with charging twenty bucks for this thing. It's really just that crappy pen cam in different packaging.
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