Not as advertised, but not that bad

Author's Rating:

Pros: Small, sleek, comfortable in the hand, controls easy to access.

Cons: No included software or cables. Not USB friendly, as advertised. Grainy playback

The Bottom Line: 
I recomend paying a little more, for better quality. I returned mine for a JVC, which is an all around better camera, for only $3 more (after rebate).

Author's Review
The Panasonic PV-GS12 is a very nice looking little camera. It fit perfectly into my hand and all the controls were easy to operate single handedly.
The camera is very small and lightweight and the LCD is clear.
It has a 3 way LED lamp, for dark situations, which is nice. It's the only one I found with 2 brightness levels.
It also comes with a night-vision mode, but the shutter speed is so slow, everything is blury and it has a sort of strobe effect. I can't imagine when this would come in handy.
The camcorder comes with a lot of nice features, like image stabilization, a 20X optical zoom and still shot capability.
The still shots are stored on a SD memory card (not included)

When I was doing my research, I got the impression that you could use USB to transfer your video to a PC, but once I got the camera home, I found out the USB is only for still-shots from the SD Memory card, and neither the cable, nor the software is included.
To transfer the video to your PC, you need firewire and image transfer software. (again, the software and cable are not included).
I went to the Panasonic web-page to download the USB driver and the link to the driver did not work. I sent an e-mail to the help-desk and never got a reply (6 days).
My PC doesn't have firewire, and it would cost $75 for the card and software, so any savings over a better camcorder were negated (for me).

The camcorder is super easy to connect to the TV for playback, but the video is grainy and zig-zaggy.

All in all, it isn't a bad little camera for the price, but if you don't have firewire, you wont be able to transfer video to your hard drive.
I got no support from Panasonic and the drivers page is full of errors.

I returned my camera to Circuit City and the clerk says they get a lot of them back.