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Sakar iConcepts 49152-DM Review

Yes, this thing not only sucks, it bites, it even chews...

First, you got to understand, the instructions are written in English, yes...

By somebody who speaks Chinese as his first language.

Whoever it is speaks and writes English much better than I do Chinese.

Next, the Cameras are made in China. AND, they have a very small number of unique chipsets, thus a small number of actual drivers. The New Jersey office Don't Actually Run Things.

I've got three "different" cameras (from the appearance) one of them looks like a deformed fountain pen, one of them looks like a regular "instamatic" film camera and one is very small, looks like an expensive digital cam but is cheaper than last month's fish.

The pen-cam I bought from Wally World/MallWart and had the disk. It actually worked.

Except of course the internals are very shoddily made. I mean, Come on, Sakar!?!

You pay these guys 5 dollars a week to do high tech work, I guess there's something to be said for "Pay the workers a just Wage" but they haven't quite caught on to that concept just yet.

Even that isn't good enough for the Good People of WalMart.

No, my brethren, it just isn't enough.

By the time a camera gets to the $10 and below rack at WalMart it's well beyond the date when you'll actually get support. Not one of these cameras even has a picture on the Sakar website of the device in question.

Another problem is they market the chipsets (the actual camera, the shell it comes in can be anything) under license to a bunch of companies who assume (for a while) that Sakar itself provides support and thus, they don't have to do it.

Some of them, once they catch on to the fact that Sakar won't do the whole Support thingie... Still tell you to contact Sakar.

Sakar tells you to contact the (sic) Manufacturer. The (sic)Manufacturer will bounce you right back to Sakar.

By the time you read that part you're already familiar with that.

There ARE people who can make it work, (just not, you know, ME) but Sakar won't hire them.

Because they ask for more than $5 a week in wages, or so I strongly suspect.

Here's where I found out about the small number of chipsets I used Linux to detect it.

There's a couple of Linux programs which do video capture, DigiKam for instance.

There's a whole long list of cameras supported by DigiKam, which is really just a window displaying the output for about 5 different programs. That one works in KDE, the Gnome one looks different but does the exact same thing.

BUT there's a long list, like I said, of "different" cameras with the Same Circuit Board Inside. And one driver works for all of the cameras made with that particular board.

Fat chance ever getting your money back at WalMart too.

The Walton family didn't get to be the richest family in the world by being nice or honest or anything like that.

Sakar fits in just nicely with them too.

jonah
Tue, 12 May 2009 02:26:34 +0000

This thing is horrible. Quality of it isn't even as good as the lowest of the low cell phone cameras. The cell phone camera busted on my phone so I got this thing. I wasn't expecting much for 10 bucks but this thing can't even take pictures at VGA quality. We are talking about a 352x288 maximum size here. Pathetic. Since they don't put the specifications on the box I had to guess at how good it was when I bought it. Had Sakar put the resolutions on the box I would have left this POS on the rack at Wal-Mart where it belongs.

Phil Johnson
Sun, 01 Nov 2009 16:23:28 +0000

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