I love this thing! It works SO well!

Author's Rating:

Pros: Excellent craftsmanship, easy to use, brilliant pictures, fast USB, expandable

Cons: Need to treat delicately, somewhat long delay when snapping a picture

The Bottom Line: 
It's so small, well made, takes utterly surprisingly good photos. This device is a supreme joy to own and operate!

Author's Review
Background
I'm a digital camera Guinea Pig so to say. I buy so many of them, fool around with them, use them for my local social website, etc.. In general I'm a techno geek.

This camera appealed to me, due to it's acceptable Mega Pixels and more importantly due to it's very portable size.

First look
Immediately upon taking it out of the box, you know that this camera is a quality piece of engineering. Small, tight, compact. The controls are well laid out, and it's put together very well. Like a fine instrument or pen, or watch, you can just feel the quality. I feel like this is the Mercedes of Digital Cameras.

Using it
Operation is simple enough, via the thumb wheel and below screen mounted menu controls.

Using the zoom and taking pictures required no special talent. You can use the LCD screen or the supplied view finder (to conserve battery power).

The battery does last long enough to suit my needs, and has yet to run out on me during the night. I typically take over 100 pictures in "small" mode out at a bar on a weekend.

I recommend purchasing an upgraded Compact Flash card.

Too bad this didn't come with a Compact Flash Type II slot, then you could use a mini Micro Hard Drive and store literally tens of thousands of pictures. But that may be overkill :)

It comes with a adequate 3x optical zoom and a 2x digital zoom which I've found to be good enough to properly crop my photos. It also has a 20 second movie mode, which I have no use for. I've used it maybe 5 times. It's hard to capture impromptu moments in only 20 seconds!

Picture Quality
One word: IMPRESSIVE. The colors are rich, the focus is clear, and overall very lifelike. I've received so many compliments as to the quality.

Software, not too bad, I've seen better, but the point is just to get them off the camera and on to the PC so you can upload them to the web or email to friends and family.
You can also perform basic image adjustments like color, contrast and rotation.

A bit of advice: If your goal is to get high quality prints, I would ask you to consider higher MegaPixel cameras. This camera can take perfect 5x7 prints, but you'll lose quality of you go any higher. I've printed out 8x10 pictures that are still very good at a moderate distance, but if you examine closely, you can see some grain.

Conclusion
If you're looking for a super sexy, slim, easy to use camera that take INCREDIBLE pictures, then this is your baby. I would recommend this to anyone looking for a digital camera. I've become a huge fan of Canon based on my experience with this workhorse of a device. I've now taken well over 5000 pictures and it's showing no signs of slowing down... One minor thing is that the lettering on the camera is beginning to wear out a bit, but that's a non-issue.