Battery Problem and general usage

Buyers have been complaining about battery problems. When I bought this camera, the shop owner explained to me that users were having problems with standard AA batteries moving within the camera and occasionally breaking electrical contact. This would result in the camera freezing etc. He advised me to use a lithium CR-V3 battery and this has been successful. The battery works very well. I am grateful to the shop owner for his honest advice. This is obviously a design fault with the camera as the battery compartment is slightly too large to hold the AA batteries securely. This problem does not happen with other cameras.

General usage is fine. Afterall, it is just a point & shoot camera (I bought this camera for my teenage daughter, whereas I use more sophisticated cameras) so users should lower their expectations compared to the best cameras - but the best cameras also cost a lot more. However, from my initial look at the camera, it provides good images and certainly sufficient for the intended user (until she gets more knowledgeable etc).

Movie mode is below par compared to some other cameras, but after all its main role is as a still camera.

I do have a complaint and it is a serious one. When first powering up the camera or when switching to review mode, the camera can take a long time to become ready. It seems the camera is reading the entire SD card each time before it becomes possible for the user to act. If I have no SD card in the camera at all, then the camera starts up quickly etc because it reading just 14MB or so of internal memory. I used a 1GB SD card and the delay is annoyingly very long. Which means the camera is definitely not point and shoot when first switching on the camera. Other digital cameras do not do this - it seems the software inside the Kodak is not intelligent and does not enable a means of knowing how much of a memory card has been used etc with fast indexing of data within the card. If anyone knows of a way around this long start up delay - please let us know.

If my understanding of the camera above is correct, then this long delay with larger memory cards makes the camera almost useless for the intended market of P&S users. Either use small memory cards (perhaps max 256MB) or do not buy the camera.

I have not used Kodak cameras before now. Previously Nikon, Canon and Konica Minolta which have all been excellent allowing for technical developments over the last few years which has been rapid. With a big name like Kodak and its long history in photography, I thought it would know how to design cameras well enough at least at the basic level. But the comments above show two design faults which are unacceptable given the number of competent camera manufactures out in the market place. A disappointment.

Overall review - hard to say?? Design flaws are bad. The rest of the camera is compact, easy to use and fine for the price point and intended user.