HP Mini 1000 Webcam Fix

I cannot believe that the fix to the crappy webcam problem is something so simple! I wonder how many people returned their HP because the webcam quality was horrendous! I'll be doing this as soon as I get home tonight!

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HP Mini 1000 Webcam Fix Requires a Little Elbow Grease

via GottaBeMobile.com by Warner Crocker on 2/26/09

When I won the HP Mini 1000 at CntrStg during CES 2009 I was excited and knew my wife was going to claim this Netbook the minute I got home, which she did. While I've worked with it a bit, I haven't had my hands on it very much, so I never noticed this webcam problem. My wife doesn't use the webcam either, but I checked it out this morning after seeing this post on SlashGear and sure enough the webcam issue does exist.

The problem? Apparently HP shipped the Mini 1000's with a black film over the webcam (probably to protect it during the assembly process) without adding a step to remove it along the way. This results in any image from the webcam being, well, very dark and unusable. HP hasn't officially acknowledged the issue as a defect yet, but according to SlashGear an HP employee filmed a video showing how to pop open the case and remove the film. I guess that's a way of unofficially acknowledging the issue.

My bad for not checking this out sooner, but I guess I'll have to give this fix a try.