[Velocity211]

I was wondering why the external iSight is so big? The built-in iSight for the new macs can fit in the screen and it has better quality too. Does the external iSight have anything that the built-in ones don't?

[mduell]

Autofocus vs fixed focus lens.

[chabig]

And remember that the external iSight is 2 years old, has to have connections for plugs and mounting, and may have some kind of power supply inside.

[cold aspiration]

Does the external isight have a built in mic? or does it use the built in mic on the computers? Because for some reasonn, the whole backside of the isight reminds me of a mic. Also, the external has a feature where you can "blind" the person on the other end of the video chat for some privacy or to prepare a surprise or whatever.

[Cadaver]

Originally Posted by cold aspiration

Does the external isight have a built in mic?

Yes. A very good one, too.
And the external one does have an iris-style lens cover behind the glass. You can set iChat to launch automatically when you open the lens cover.

[iREZ]

i fail to see how the built in cams are better than the external isights. i have both an intel imac and macbook pro, and when using my cousins external isight on his G5 notice an even (maybe even slightly better) image...am i the only one who thinks this?...maybe i have to do a side by side comparison.

[macboy]

I heard that before too, about the regular iSights being much better quality. Well they probably are considering they're autofocus as mduell mentioned, but lighting also makes a vast difference.

[tooki]

If you look inside a standalone iSight, you can see that the camera mechanism is actually only about an inch long. The rest is the microphones (two of them) and the support electronics -- and airspace.

tooki

[Landos Mustache]

I thought the one in laptops has better resolution but no focus?

[dimmer]

The built-in iSight has twice the resolution of the external (640x480 vs half of those)--so if you are less than aesthetically pleasing, you look 4x worse, pixel wise. It's also a USB device, not a Firewire one, just for the geeks.

[imitchellg5]

I have noticed that my external iSight has better quality then my grandpa's internal iSight-even with his 2.5 gigs of RAM.

[macboy]

uhh internal iSight with 2.5 gig of RAM? Which Apple portable let's you have more than 2GB of ram? well apart from the 2gb stick that costs like a grand

[tooki]

The iMac also has a built-in iSight.

tooki

[Landos Mustache]

Originally Posted by imitchellg5

I have noticed that my external iSight has better quality then my grandpa's internal iSight-even with his 2.5 gigs of RAM.

What does RAM have to do with it?