Digital Blue American Idol Digital Camcorder

As you might expect of a $50 device, it has some limitations. The onboard memory holds only about 4 minutes of video at the camcorder's best setting, and the external microphone connects not to the camcorder but to your computer's sound card, so unless you lug a laptop around, you can't use it away from home.

And its video quality is pretty awful even under the best circumstances; it came in fourth out of five devices in our "Put the You in YouTube" story (PC World, May), a test of products for uploading to video sharing sites. The camera beat only the Palm Treo 750 camera phone. That's mostly because the video it captures is of relatively low resolution (340 by 240) at only 15 frames per second. Even the camera phone captured 30-fps video (but it still came in last because its data rate was even lower than the Idol's).

The included software is very easy to use--just click a button to import clips, and then transfer them to your "permanent" collection. You can insert provided clips of things like American Idol stages with your own clips, insert transitions, and even adjust color and exposure.

If someone gave me the American Idol Digital Camcorder as a gift, I might look askance at it. But it'd be great as a starter camcorder for preteens, who would have to work pretty hard to break it, and who would probably have a great time playing with the software.

Alan Stafford