Creative hops bandwagon with Vado camera

Creative today took a cue from the unusually successful Flip camera and launched the Vado. The company promises an improvement on the concept of an ultra-simple, YouTube-oriented video recorder with a design it says is both thinner and lighter than its rival and gives the camera 2GB of built-in flash memory. This gives the Vado up to two hours of recording time at its native 640x480 resolution, Creative says. Built-in software can help streamline uploads either to YouTube or Photobucket, though the use of MPEG-4 allows common video editing software to edit captured footage.

Like the Flip, the Vado has no optical zoom and eschews the need for separate cables, hooking up to a computer through a swivel-out USB connector that also recharges the camera. The device is also one of Creative's few explicitly Mac-compatible offerings and works with any Mac OS X 10.4.11 or later system as well as most modern Windows PCs. Versions ship in pink or silver at $100, with options for a carrying case ($15), extra battery packs ($15), a charging cradle ($30), and an AV-out cable ($10). Both the camera and the accessories should be available today.