Logitech QuickCam Go is neither logical, quick nor going

I walked inside and asked if they did circumcisions, as I had recently converted to the Jewish faith. The guy there looked at me puzzled and said, ‘But this is an electronics’ store. How could you possibly get the idea that we would do circumcisions?’
   ‘But it’s on the front of your shop,’ I replied.
   ‘Show me,’ he demanded.
   So I did. Emblazoned on the front of his shop were the words, in Avant Garde Gothic Bold, uppercase, ‘Dick Smith’.

I am joking about the above, and no, I am not Jewish. But I did go to Dick Smith Electronics today and bought a Logitech QuickCam Go webcam after having been asked to appear on al-Jazeera. From there, the problems began. After all, it is the tail end of Mercury retrograde.

• Got home to find that the sealed box was missing the stand.
• Went to a nearer Dick Smith store to be told that they had sold out, but a customer return of the same product had a stand, and that was given to me.
• Began installing software. The box claims it’s very easy: install software; plug in camera; video instantly. The instruction menu warned me to not plug in the camera till prompted.
• Installation froze about three-quarters of the way through. Had to crash out of the program.
• Restarted installation. Program took four minutes to start from the time the CD-ROM was reinserted.
• Installation was slow and took nearly half an hour. At no point was I prompted to ever plug in the camera into the USB port.
• Installation program alerted me, despite the status bar having reached five-sixths of the way, that I should reboot my computer. I clicked ‘OK’. As I did so, the remainder of the installation continued while other programs were crashing around me.
• The installation completed as everything else was shutting down, in the nick of time. A second prompt about rebooting appeared. Still no prompt to plug in the camera.
• Computer rebooted. Started Logitech’s program. It complains that I have not plugged in the camera. I plug it in.
• It asks for a sound check. Lo and behold, it turns out that this device has no microphone built in. Not that there was any warning about this other than a line in the instruction manual. In other words, a regular Joe would not know that he had to buy an optional accessory to be heard. And I am not appearing on telly with my regular headphones on.
• The camera supposedly stands on top of the monitor. I’d like to see it done. Yes, I do have a flat screen. I just assumed the stand would be designed to accommodate both. It isn’t: you need a CRT for it to work. Otherwise, it’s out with the Scotch tape.

   This comedy took around an hour to see its way through, from the time the stand was supplied by Dick Smith (whose service, I should note, was excellent).
   Let’s see how they are when I take this piece of crap back.
   As with most software and hardware I have bought of late, remember the golden rule: do the opposite of what the manual tells you and all will be fine.

So, do you reckon Dick Smith sells Viagra?