When I was working on my review of the HP mini 1000 netbook, I remember testing the webcam and thinking how dark and grainy the picture was. Rob and I talked about it and after some research, he found some forums where people found a solution. That solution involved doing a bit of surgery though. Rob fixed his, but I didn’t bother since I don’t use a webcam very often. I forgot all about the problem until last week when Judie Lipsett posted a video of a product manager from HP fixing her own HP Vivienne Tam edition netbook.

The fix involves opening the seam between the case and the screen bezel. A small square of tinted plastic film stuck over the webcam window is then removed from the bezel side of the case.

In the video that Judie posted on Gear Diary, the person from HP mentions that she is going to remove the piece of film because it doesn’t belong there.

Again, I sort of forgot about the issue because I don’t use this feature of the netbook. But then I heard that HP asked Judie to remove the video from her site… and then the person from HP left a comment on Judie’s post saying that film is supposed to be there and not to remove it. Hmmmm, so that got me thinking that I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. So I decided to try the fix on my own Vivienne Tam netbook.

To start out, I want to show you 2 before pictures.

Click the thumbnail to see the full size image

This image was taken in my basement office with all lights on. My office has a LOT of lights. I have a 3 bulb compact flourescent lamp in ceiling in the center of the room and then compact flourescent can lights along the edges of walls on two walls. As you can see this image is a bit dim and grainy, but not too bad because I have a LOT of light in that room.

Click the thumbnail to see the full size image

Here’s a second picture, this time with only the side can lights turned on and no overhead lights. In case you’re wondering, my regular HP Mini 1000 (Black version) has the exact same issue).

Doing the fix was a little scary, so I can understand why HP doesn’t really want people doing this. There’s a good chance that you could scratch the screen, scratch the inside of the Black painted bezel, crack the bezel, etc…

Click the thumbnail to see the full size image

To slightly pop open the case (you don’t have to open it all the way… at least I didn’t), I took a guitar pick and wedged it in the seam and twisted it a bit to pop open the two plastic clips on other side of the webcam. Then, I was able to flex the bezel open far enough to get a pair tweezers in there to pull off the plastic film from other side of the webcam window.

Click the thumbnail to see the full size image

There’s the film that I removed. You can see that it’s tinted. Why HP ever decided to put that over the webcam lens is really puzzling…

Now for a picture after the I completed the fix.

Click the thumbnail to see the full size image

I took this picture in the same place as the other pix and this time it’s only with the side lights like the worse before picture. Wow, you can tell a big difference. And an even bigger difference is that the image isn’t as grainy. I’ll admit that it’s not the best webcam image that I’ve ever seen, but it’s not nearly as bad as it was with the wacko tinted film.

I’m not really sure how to end this post because I’m not sure what HP is going to do to fix this issue for HP Mini owners. Right now they are telling them to just find a brighter place to use their webcams. That’s a really lame solution in my opinion. So we’ll see what happens… If you’re a mini owner with this problem, let me know and if you’ve peformed surgery on yours, let me too know.

Filed in categories: Uncategorized

Tagged: Gear Diary, HP Mini, HPVT, Netbook

HP mini 1000 Netbook Webcam Issue originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on March 2, 2009 at 8:02 pm.