Whether you're a hectic business person on the move or a student wanting to keep in touch with your friends, a sensibly sized and priced Webcam is the perfect accessory for your laptop when you're away from base.

Anything that takes up as little space as possible and doesn't weigh as much as a half-brick is a prime candidate and Creative's latest foray into the Webcam market certainly fits those needs very neatly. Weighing a mere 40g, the WebCam Notebook is exceptionally unobtrusive.

It comes with a stylish soft carrying case and has an attractive design that sits neatly along the top of a notebook screen, unlike the more usual circular designs. It attaches itself using a spring-loaded clip, and unfortunately this is where the first alarm bell starts to ring.

We tested the camera on an Acer Aspire 1700 laptop and the clip couldn't expand sufficiently to encompass the (admittedly slightly broader than usual) screen's edge. The 'hook-on legs' method would have been a much safer bet, as the camera can only attach to displays of up to 14mm in thickness.

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Now we get to the nitty gritty - what about the picture quality? Well for a start it makes use of a VGA CMOS sensor rather than the better quality CCD used by the WebCam NX Ultra. The good news is that there's automatic colour and exposure control and you can tilt it easily to find the right angle. It has a perfectly acceptable maximum resolution of 640 by 480 pixels and can be set at 30 frames per second, but in good light the images are darker than you'd expect.

There's a sharp difference, though, in low light conditions, where the pictures turn out so grainy that they'd be almost intolerable for Web conferencing or any sustained communication. Bearing in mind that the focus has to be manually adjusted, the USB connection is 1.1 rather than the far superior 2.0 and there's no microphone, it's hard to see how this WebCam is going to compete successfully against the plethora of impressive models in this range.

Creative does have a habit of including plenty of useful software with its products and this is no exception. Creative PC-Cam Centre allows you to capture videos and stills to your desktop and Arcsoft PhotoImpression will then enable you to edit those photo images. There's also some Spycam software that will turn your laptop into a motion detector and Arcsoft Multimedia Email makes the business of posting your videos and pictures to friends and colleagues a breeze.

If you're not too fussed about the quality of your pictures, then the WebCam Notebook is the lightest and most stylish laptop camera you can buy. But for the long haul, it's worth spending more to get something much more versatile and of much better video quality.