Very nice camera for a decent price EASY SOFTWARE

Author's Rating:

Pros: Beautiful images, compress to email very well, small, easy software for download, works on iMovie

Cons: awkward to hold, touchy zoom, useless GPS, Sony service

The Bottom Line: 
Nice camera for decent price and fabulously easy to use with lovely video quality.  You'll need to learn to edit and email to satisfy your need to show it off.

Author's Review
My last camera was a Sony MMV (coincidence) and is now about 7 years old.  When preparing to buy a new one I knew two things:  It needed to by HD and, 2) it needed to be small.  I tried to do extensive product reviews on the available models and their respective qualities.  I found that it appeared to be a close call with Canon, Sony and JVC in the lead spots.  Where I really found the difference is in a little known complication - massive software compatibility problems with the new format known as "high definition".  This is a problem that I'll bet most people don't think about until after the purchase has been made (and at that point the damning "20% restocking fee" is already looming for any returns).  The only camera which seemed to have a lower chance of having these issues was, incredulously enough, Sony.  Since I do have a couple of Sony PCs (in addition to a critical Mac for movie editing) I thought it might be a safer bet.  So here's what happened after unwrapping it, shooting 20 minutes of film, downloading it on the PC and even downloading it on the Mac (where I edited into a promotional video of one of my horses):

Took it out of the box and marveled again at the 120G internal drive that translates to hours and hours of video (probably much more than I would ever have the patience to download or edit) as well as the 10 hour extended life battery I purchased along with it (it comes standard with a 2 hour battery).
Without having glanced at the directions, I drove down to the stable and took video of my horses zooming around the pasture.  That's right, I flipped open the touch-screen display and pressed "record".  I found the zoom easily and immediately determined that it could be in a better spot and it's much too sensitive, but workable after some practice.  Also, it has some really fabulous features (I really discovered later) such as smile recognition (where it automatically detects your adorable kids smiling and saves a still photo without your knowledge) but none of these things work on horses, so more about that later. 
Upon returning home, I popped the software into my PC without an issue, hooked the camera up with a standard USB cable and downloaded some really stunning footage.  The colors are really quite nice, but there's a real bonus.  The raw footage is at such high resolution that I was able to pull some really nice still images right from the video footage (pulling the exact image I want by walking through the movie frame by frame).  Amazingly enough, these freeze frames are even 2-3 megapixel images, which, if you've ever tried to do this before HD, you would recognize as a minor miracle.
Next, I opened iMovie on my Mac and plugged the camera in.  No problem.  Even with the limitations on the iMovie software I was able to produce a lovely little video (links below) and as another bonus; when you shrink HD video into an email-sized video (even under 10mB) the result is a crystal clear emailable video - nice!!
OK, so now I got all excited and purchased an underwater housing for our upcoming trip to Rangiroa (in Tahiti).  I just purchased the standard housing from Sony ($250) which is a "bargain" compared to professional grade housings (<$1000)...but wait for the punchline...
It only goes to 17ft.  We have gutters deeper than that.  Any diver knows that everything worth seeing is between 30 and 50 feet.  And, it's the most awkward, boyant, difficult shape to boot - steer clear.  Still, the underwater images were average (our little Olympus Stylus took much more impressive underwater images).
OK, that was a little tantrum I felt badly needed throwing.  Back on track and the usual terrestrial usage:  Though I've not tested all of the "fancy" features (such as a ridiculously useless GPS that stamps your images with your location...unless you're in Tahiti and it can't seem to get a signal) but so far, it's really pretty impressive.  Would I buy it again?  Sure.  Would I buy the underwater housing again?  No way.  I'd buy some better lenses and tripods for capturing more of my beautiful kids, dogs and horses.
(PS) I just read the Epinions policy on links and apparently I can only include links to other "epinions" sites - none of which have any of my test images/videos posted.  Therefore, if you're really dying to see some test video, my horsey website is called "Dreamfriesians" and my YouTube channel is "zlafayette".  Both of these sites will have a video of "Banderine PRE Andalusian Stallion" which is the video I shot with this camera and edited in iMovie.  The still images of the black stallion running through a pasture at the bottom of the DreamFriesians home page are pulled from the video (freeze frames).  Enjoy!