That one seems as good as any. Just keep in mind you need enough CPU power to run the capture and whatever you're capturing. Watchout that what you capture will be HD that may not scale to SD very nicely.
The other tool for doing this is the Sony 1024 Scan Converter. We've had ours for a long time but they still get regular use. With this box you just feed the VGA into it and it gives you SD video out ready to record. I think Canopus make a similar box with more features.

Bob.

Camtasia had an offer a little while ago to download version 3 for free. No catch. I grabbed it and it seems to do a good job.

Another one that's supposedly good (and free) that I haven't yet tried is Debut

From here: http://www.nchsoftware.com/capture/index.html

thanks,

downloaded camtasia and debut - the former seems to be pretty good, though i can't seem to fathom out the best screen capture for use in hd. debut is an interesting freebie, but the capture quality leaves something to be desired, that is, once you scale the resulting avi....

i like bobs' hardware solution - i LIKE hardware, you know where you are with it, and it['s limitations. i have an old creative vga to composite / svideo in a box somewhere around here, so i'm going to dig it out and compare all three...

leslie

I like this one: http://www.bobyte.com/AviScreen/index.asp.

it's simple to use & works great.

Camtasia does have the advantage of including an excellent flash compressor. I've used several hardware scan converters, but I get much cleaner video from Camtasia (as noted by others, a fast CPU is needed if you're going to capture large images with lots of movement; I could only capture up to about 960x540 - a fourth of HD - with capturing fly-arounds in my Sketchup models before Sketchup 6 came along with its video export capability). I'm using a Q6600 running at 3.05 gHz.

Snagit lets you capture the screen, window or a defined region of the screen and creates an AVI file. You can also allow the cursor to show or be hidden in the video.

The sound capture lets you pick the resolution up to stereo 16b/48K.

Depends what you want to do.

The absolute best screen capture program out there is Adobe Captivate.

While Captivate can capture your computer screen to a digital video file just like Camtasia, et al, its greatest strength lies in its ability to capture your on-screen actions as very compact Flash files.

Basically, Captivate captures a sequence of screen shots, either automatically based on on-screen events (mouse clicks and dialog boxes, for example), or manually via a shortcut key.

When you move your mouse, Captivate records Point A and Point B, and animates the movement in a Flash layer.

Captivate not only takes a screen shot of dialog boxes, but it also generates callouts and labels them -- all automatically.

If you type into a dialog box, your keystrokes are recorded -- along with a keyboard sound effect.

If you click on a button, Captivate automatically creates a callout that tells viewers to "Click the Save button", for example.

When you end the recording session, Captivate creates a multi-layer, fully editable Flash file. The screen shots show up as a series of slides, similar to what you might see in PowerPoint. If you add (by re-recording a portion) or delete a slide, Captivate automatically re-calculates mouse movements for you -- it's quite seamless.

You can edit mouse movements, change the text in the dialog boxes, and alter the timing of the on-screen events. I've never used Flash, and I was able to do this with just an occasional foray into the on-screen Help menu.

The entire process begins and ends in Flash, so you get a nice, compact file. You may also be able to render the file as a video, but I can't recall.

The program retails for $700, and Adobe offers a 30-day free trial version. If this is too steep, several companies make knock-offs in the $100 range that look and feel nearly identical, but they don't label dialog boxes nearly as well.

Links:
http://www.adobe.com/products/captivate/ ($700)
http://www.flashdemobuilder.com/product.html ($100)
http://www.wondershare.com/e-learning/demo-creator/demo-creator_overview.html ($70)

Another vote for Adobe Captivate. Pricey but worth it, espec for those creating tutorials/lessons.
But AviScreen would probably fit your purpose just fine (freeware).