Good all round player

With a fantastic physical design I have to give someone at Sony full marks for that aspect (the same person or group that designed the 717, I presume).
Positives- Reasonably good built-in GUI, with great physical advantages for framing and manual focussing and zooming without breaking step- if you get familiar with this camera, it starts to feel like a glove, if a weighty scale armour one. Good battery life. Seems pretty robust.
Negatives - A few stupid design flaws in operation, flash shadowed by lens-should flip up higher, the purple fringing on some brightly backlit shots, this seems to vary with focal lenght.
Viewfinder is too low-res. Some barrel distortion.
Conclusion - Love this camera for it's fantastic physical design, and it can take fab shots although there are the odd things that show it up as a jack-of-all-trades. But it is a good all-round rock'n'roller, and also has features to keep you exploring photography. If, like me, you are getting into photography but not a pro, then find one of these being sold by a dissatisfied pro and you will not be disappointed. But at the new price, you may want something else. But I do recommend the handling as a physical design as ingenious above all other designs I've seen or tried.