For Christmas, I ended up getting some spare money for myself and bought me a present of my own. I bought a new Logitech Orbit AF webcam.

This Camera is expensive, but worth the money. At just around one hundred thirty dollars, it’s not good on a those budget, but it does some really nifty features. First of all, for a webcam, it has EXCELLENT picture quality. It uses Carl Zeiss optics to deliver simply amazing video and pictures. It can even do video up to 1600 x 1200 pixels, which is HD Quality. It even has the ability to take pictures with it’s 8 MegaPixes, with a software enchancment. It even has the ability to track your movements and pan and tilt with it. It also has a decent Zoom, and an auto focus feature, that I have had to try to work around once, as the focus got off for some strange reason. I believe I had messed with the manual focus and got it all messed up, so until I know the reason it happened, I just have to assume that I caused the error.

Now, The camera does come with a  pole to raise the camera orb. To use, you pull the orb off the stand, place the orb on one ond of the pole and the other end back in the base, and now you have about a six inch raised camera. This is really useful if you need to rise the level of the camera, as well as it helps if you need to lower it back down. To lower, just unhook the orb and the pole and plug the orb back into the stand.

I really like the camera, and I have used it a couple of times. I even used it to stream a little of me playing the MMO City of Heroes, and turn it to my monitor when I playing some Xbox 360. The Overall picture was decent, but not that great when viewing the monitor then, as I didn’t mess with my brightness, contrast, or gamma levels on the monitor. If you plan on streaming stuff on a TV or computer monitor, I do sujest that you change your change your levels so that it shows up good on the video.

All in all, this is the webcam that I wanted when I got my first webcam. The quality is amazing, it has features that I love. The only bad thing if the cost. If you are planning on getting one, you might want to consider this camera if you are doing a stream with ustream or one of the other live streaming video sites. If you end up going out and getting a webcam for thirty dollars and some change, do not be surprised if the quality isn’t all that grand. If you can afford the Logitech Orbit, then you might want to consider getting it. I give this camera a rating of 9 out of 10.

As I write this review, I am reviewing my new purchase off of eBay, a Logitech G15 Gaming keyboard with flip up LCD screen.

I like the look of the keyboard, and I love the fact that it has three sets of eighteen programmable G keys for macros, as well as different profiles for different games. I love the fact that the flip up lcd screen is easy to read, and I love the functions that are a part of the keyboard and the lcd screen interface area. There are a few things I don’t like, but I will get to those later. It also has unpowered USB inerfaces (1.1 I think, ot USB 2.0) and LED backlit keys.

The eighteen G keys . Why do they call this the G15? Why not call it the Logitech G18 Gaming Keyboard? I mean there are three sets of eighteen macro “G” keys. Setting them up in the manager for it us easy. you just have to remember to tell the command to hit ENTER. Yes, I forgot this earlier, and just had the command there in the chat window. Now the game I am using is CITY OF HEROES from NCSoft. Recording the macro is just as easy as 1, 2, 3. If the macro is not in the presets for the game, then you click the ADD button to add a new macro. After you name it, click the START RECORDING MACRO button. As you type in what the macro is supposed to do, it is displayed. When you get done with it, hit stop recording. There, simple and direct. that’s how I like my macro recording. With these, you type in the macro like you would in the game. For example in COH, to record a macro to activate the power NOVA and say, BOOM! you would issue the collowing command

/macro NOVA “powexec_name nova$$local “BOOM!”

That would place a round macro in one of your empty toolbars to click. Now, on the G keys, you select which g key you want, you start to create , click start recording and then type poexec_name$$local BOOM!

That will have that on a g key then , instead of taking up space on the HUD.

Now, let’s move on to the LCD screen and stuff there. You can check the wikipedia site for the Logitech G15 and see what programs it supports. I am going to talk about the TeamSpeak client interface and the programs that are on the LCD from the get go. First of all, LCD CLOCK is just the local and date. Simple! Performace monitor gives you the current CPU and Memory usage. NEAT! Finally, the POP 3 checker checks your m email. This doesn’t delete them off the server, unless you delete them with this interface. Finally that moves me to the TeamSpeak client (there is one for Ventrilo, but I’ve not looked into it). This shows you various stuff, like the last few people to connect or disconnect. It can also show you who is talking at that time. It also shows all users connected to the server. Now, there are buttons to set yourself away, muted, and such. However, don’t get carried away with them. You will get a ban form the server. I found this out on TS this past weekend. LOL.

Now, let’s move on the options I don’t like.

I do not like the footprint of the keyboard. It is wider than I like. on my desk, I tend to eat food as well at times. With my old Zboard and normal keyboard, I tend to slide them under the small shelf where my two monitors are setting. With the G15, I can’t do that because it’s too wide.

I also hate the fact that if you do not use the backlit keys, you have a harder time to see which keys are which. Sadly tho, I still need to see what keys are what until I get the layout down in my head.

The next dislike is based on my desk, and not the keyboard. But, I need to have the keyboard out further than I like to use the lcd screen. I have a tray that turns out from my desk that hold pends and little whatnots. I know all I need to do is take it off, but I have been too busy to do that lately.

All in all, the keyboard is REALLY good. The pros for this outweighs most of the bads. However, it’s still a pricey keyboard new. I mean, I’ve still seen the original “gaming” keyboard still around one hundred dollars. And the revised version still around that price. I am going to give this keyboard a rating 8.5 out of 10.