Great all rounder

Firstly, I want to get something off my chest. This camera has received a bit of a hammering for poor battery life, and sure, I've owned cameras which are much better in this respect but it's not the worst by far either and a few points to note. 1) This camera uses standard AA size batteries. They are cheap as chips even for good capacity ones and so even when your batteries eventually die, they are really cheap to replace unlike proprietary ones. 2) Because they are cheap and easy to get hold of, it's not a big inconvenience to carry a few spares around with you if you really are going to be keeping the cmera busy. Plus, it's not a pocket camera pretty any camera bag you buy for it will accomodate spares easily. 3) We have to remember that it only uses 2 of them. Other manufacturers can claim longer battery life but accomodating 4 batteries in the camera but at the expense of having a bigger body.

So, with that gripe off my chest, here's what i like about it.

Picture Quality is generally excellent. The camera keeps noise well under control except in the higest ISO mode and even at ISO 1000 it's not unbearable. At least ISO 1000 is present.
Purple fringing can be a problem, as it can on many cameras of this type. It will show up on high contrast edges but would probably not even be noticable unless you're printing out on large format paper or are really zoomed in. I would have liked to see less fringing though.
The lens seems very good quality. Distortion is very low and focus is maintained well in to the corners. The zoom is variable speed and very smooth.
The image stabilisation is a fantastic feature. Of course a relatively steady hand is still required, you cant take great pics jumping up and down on a trampoline but it really comes in to it's own at the telephoto end of the zoom where shake would be more noticable, and it also really helps with those spontaneou shots where youdont really have time to frame properly. As an example, whilst in holiday a hummingbird cought my eye and luckily I had the camera turned on. I swung the camera at the hummingbird and pressed the shutter with no time to make any preparations and the resulting picture is rock solid, capturing the detail of the feathers and even stopping the wings in motion with only the slightest motion blur on the edges. I could never have done this without Steady Shot.
Video is of a quality not unlike my Mini-DV camcorder and still looks perfectly acceptable displayed on a television. Shame you cant zoom during video capture though.
The LCD display is one of this cameras strongest features. It is huge and of a very high resolution. It is bright and clear in all but the brightest sunlight.
The handling is OK. The weight is good as is the grip bu I do have a tendancy to rest my left index finger on top of the pop-up flash, preventing it from popping up. Oh, and the flash is pretty strong too allowing for flash use further than just portraits.
Overall, i reslly like it and if you're after someting a bit better and more flexible that a pocket point and shoot then this may be the one for you. It takes great pics in fully auto mode and of course you can fiddle with the setting manually if you want to be more creating.
Best camera I've owned anyway. It has competion though so worth having a good shop around and see what suits you best.