The Pretec camera does have one potentially beneficial feature the HP camera does not have, a small light beside the lens that is referred to as the flashlight. If you tap the flashlight button in software, the light will come on when you take a picture. The trouble is, it's so small and weak, it's really not much use.

The HP hardware feels altogether more solidly constructed. Its one flaw is that it blocks the stylus sheath so it's impossible to remove the stylus or replace it when the camera is mounted. This is one problem the Pretec unit did not have.

Where the Pretec lens swivels sideways 270 degrees, the HP lens swivels on the vertical, though only through 180 degrees. The vertical swivel, however, means you can hold the PDA braced against your stomach and look down on the screen with the lens pointing out at the subject. With the Pretec unit, you more often have to hold the camera up in front of you, making it difficult to keep it steady in low light situations.

HP Photosmart Mobile Camera

Pretec SmartCam

Click each picture to see full-sized image

The HP software is generally slicker and although it does not let you adjust Brightness, it does let you choose the metering method (center weighted or average) and select black and white or color negative modes. Unlike the Pretec software, it does not take up the full screen, so you can still see the PDA's main bar at the top and can switch to another program.

The viewing utility, which lets you set up full-screen slide shows, is a separate application that you can launch from within the camera software. Then you can switch back and forth between the two.

The important differences between these products, though, are in performance. I captured no pictures with the Pretec that were not fuzzy and noisy—meaning there were blemishes and other artifacts introduced by the JPEG compression process. Many were poorly exposed. The videos were not even close to full motion.

The HP camera took some quite good properly exposed pictures with reasonably accurate colors, good detail and relatively little noise. And some of them were taken in less than optimum light conditions.

Don't misunderstand, though. Even the HP camera produced images clearly inferior to what you would get from, say, a 2-megapixel dedicated digital camera that sells for not much more.

The point of these SD cameras is that they are incredibly small and light, and they save the images on your PDA. And if you have a built-in GSM/GPRS or 1x (CDMA) interface, you can e-mail pictures a moment after taking them.