The Flip Video Camcorder from Pure Digital Technologies is something new to the market: An affordable compact shoot-and-share digital camcorder, which captures great quality amateur video. With the built-in software you can email videos and make video greeting cards; create custom movies with your own music; capture still photos from video clips; and publish videos online at partner websites like YouTube and/or Grouper.

There are no tapes to fuss with because it uses built-in flash memory: The 512 MB model records 30-minute videos or the 1-GB model makes 60-minute recordings.

I flipped over the price when I saw it advertised at Best Buy while shopping for a birthday gift for my 12-year-old granddaughter. It looked toy-like and simple to use. But it is well-built and sturdy and the video compares favorably to the more expensive ones.

It connects to the computer via a built-in flip arm USB connection — no more looking for a USB cable. But would it live up to expectations for shooting good video? Folks, it does not disappoint.

Getting through the attractive hard-to-open plastic packaging was difficult, but I have a handy tool (the OpenX) just for that purpose. Once it was unpackaged, I immediately began recording. The software comes loaded in the camera. The batteries were included and after 30 minutes of shooting, they were still going strong.

The playback footage had good, true color and surprisingly great resolution. There are three ways to view the video: on the camera's 1.4-inch screen, on a Macintosh or PC, and on a TV, all with incredible ease. I couldn't get over the great performance from such an inexpensive camcorder.

Another wonderful surprise was how easy-to-use the software was when I installed it on my Macintosh. They even provided information on making it play QuickTime under Rosetta on Intel Macs because the software is not yet Universal Binary.

There was no need of a tripod. It's easy to hold the camera steady using your elbows against your ribs. The included accessories are a TV connector cable, a wrist wrap, a soft carrying case, two AA batteries and an instruction booklet that is easy to understand.

But the best experience of all was clicking and dragging the .AVI clips into iMovie, editing them there and burning a DVD on my Mac and playing it back on my DVD player. For those who don't have burners the manual offers suggestions on how to order a DVD from several sources to preserve the video.

I highly recommend this inexpensive camcorder to all digital video novices and to anybody who would like to have a point-and-shoot compact digital camcorder handy. The camcorder's video quality is comparable to high-end cameras and it plays nicely on the Mac.

Pros: Small, good video quality, inexpensive.
Cons: The included Flip software is very PC-like.