I recently bought the E1500 laptop from Gigabyte, a nice little machine at an affordable price. However while preparing it for the client I struggled to get the webcam working. In fact Windows 7 doesn't even see it as installed hardware. Skype can't see it or activate it, so it really seems broken or just not there.
Searching Google for help you won't find much. If what I'm about to tell you helps you, share it! Plus one it or tweet it. You can save someone much grief. The answer lies in the manual. Look at your laptops keyboard, there is a blue "Fn" key towards the bottom left. Now look at the F11 key - it's a camera. So you need to press the Fn+F11 key to activate your webcam.
Why did they do this? Well it saves battery for one thing. I kind of like it because your webcam is one of the easiest things hackers can exploit, but now it's off, until you switch it on.
EDIT: Many have asked how they go about capturing or actually using the webcam after activation. Good question. The laptop I had in my care came with a really nasty program called AmCap (It was on the desktop). I struggled with it and eventually downloaded a newer version, which then allowed me to capture my mugshot. I suggest searching google for the latest version and using that. Otherwise you can use skype to capture images or any other free webcam program. Go to download.com for that.
