Pros: This is is a very good digital starter camera. It is relatively cheap and easy to use, in fact my 11 year old set it up right out of the box. Being a digital camera rookie, I found that if I left all the settings on AUTO my pictures turned out fantastic.

Cons: To save on battery life the camera will turn off by itself (there might be a setting to change this) and when the battery life gets low, some of the functions will not work (like zoom, and lens will not go back into camera when shut off), also the internal memeroy is extremely small, you only get about 7 great quality pics.

To allieviate the above problems invest in a large SD card (like a 256mb and you can get over 200 pics) and some quality lithium batteries (I've taken over 200 pics with the same set of batteries and no probs)!!!

(...)

We bought this camera to take to my class reunion. It came with a memory card. So far, we have taken 36 photos and a short video clip. Have not had to replace the batteries yet. (we don't expect them to last forever) No problems of any kind.

The camera is easy to use. Pictures turned out great. When viewing them on the computer, they were more clear with ACDSee software than the HP software.

Great camera for the money. Gets a "thumbs up" from us.

I received this camera as a gift, so far it has worked great and taken great pictures. I would recommend it!

The HP M307 digital camera looked very promising. It had a nice compact size, the controls were laid out very well and I liked the fact that it used standard AA batteries rather than a proprietary battery pack. My enthusiasm began to wane as soon as I started taking pictures with the camera.

After unboxing the camera, I chose to install some recently charged NIMH batteries that I had available. After taking only 5 or 6 photos, I got a low battery warning and the camera shut down. I was a little perplexed because I was pretty sure the batteries were fully charged. My other point and shoot digital camera, a Canon using 4 AA batteries lasts a very very long time before needing battery replacement. Nonetheless, I recharged the batteries and the next day, reinstalled the definitely fully charged batteries. After taking about 25 photos, the batteries were depleted again. I should mention that I was not using the LCD to view the photos which would have contributed to faster battery drain. The battery drain was just from using the camera to take photos.

The software that is provided with the camera is virtually worthless on a Macintosh computer. I had a lot of trouble getting any of the software to work as advertised. Finally I gave up with the HP software and used iPhoto to upload, view and manipulate the images. And the images needed a lot of manipulation because virtually every single "people" picture where the flash fired, the eyes had "red-eye". In all fairness, this is quite common to all small cameras where the flash is so close to the lens. Red-eye is caused by the flash reflecting out of the eyes of the person you are taking the picture of. The closer the flash is to the lens, the worse the red-eye will be. This is why professional cameras usually have flash units that are well above the lens.

The camera has a scant amount of built-in memory. So little that it might as well not have any at all. But in a pinch, you can take a few pictures without any other memory card. But you will certainly want to buy a larger capacity
SD card for the camera. It would have been nice if HP had included a SD card, but alas they did not.

The camera was easy to learn how to use. The buttons were logically placed and intuitive to operate. The on-off button was difficult to grasp though and I constantly had trouble trying to turn the camera on or off because the button was fairly smooth and it was not easy to get enough friction on it to operate it.

The camera was advertised as having audio annotation which really appealed to me. How cool it would be to attach a short audio file to a photo to describe the circumstances under which the photo was taken. Unfortunately this feature only works if you use the HP software which was basically useless.

Another problem I had with the camera was the extremely poor audio quality of the sound in movie mode. It is a great feature to be able to take movies with the camera, but the audio in the movie was very poor quality with an obnoxious buzz and whine throughout the entire audio portion of the movie.

Another huge oversight in the design of this camera was the failure to include a video output jack to enable you to view the camera photos on a television set.

The little flap of plastic which covers the USB port would never stay closed and was always flopping around. I'm surprised it hasn't broken off yet, but I'm sure it will eventually.

I can not recommend this camera to anyone. There are many other far superior digital cameras out there these days. I'd recommend looking at the Canon A75...an excellent camera with better features, far superior battery life and a much better overall fit and finish.

I have a feeling that if A. Rodriguez had to replace his camera after almost 2 months, it probably means that there was something with HIS camera not the actual model. I have this camera and it works perfectly fine and I have no complaints. When the flash loads, it takes at the most 5 seconds to do so (and just when you take the first picture after turning on your camera, not at any other time) and when taking a picture, it takes 2 seconds do so at the regular setting. Just tonight I had a "problem" with this camera and I went to HP's support and troubleshooting at www.hp.com and they, true to their word, replied in an hour and helped solve the "problem" which turned out to not be a problem at all. He told me how to fix it by changing the ISO Speed, White Balance, and EV Compensation and everything was how it was supposed to be. I definently recommend this camera.

This is great little starter camera for digital rookies like myself. It has a very user friendly menu and help screens if you're not sure what the functions are. Battery life does suck, but only if you use Nimh AA batteries, invest in some lithiums, it will make all the difference in the world. I've taken over 200 pics with Energizer AA lithium batteries and I haven't had a low battery prompt yet. Get a high memory SD card and you're all set.

I found that I got the best pics by keeping the settings on AUTO. I also have a HP computer, I just stick my SD card in the card slot on the front of my tower and I can print my pics from my computer. How simple is that??? I wanted a camera with higher megs so I upgraded to a M417, but the M307 is still a quality camera for the price.

PS. If you use Nimh batteries and the battery life gets low, the camera will start functioning strangely (it won't zoom, or shut down, or retract the lens when power is off)!!

We bought this camera to take to my class reunion. It came with a memory card. So far, we have taken 36 photos and a short video clip. Have not had to replace the batteries yet. (we don't expect them to last forever) No problems of any kind.

The camera is easy to use. Pictures turned out great. When viewing them on the computer, they were more clear with ACDSee software than the HP software.

Great camera for the money. Gets a "thumbs up" from us.

I received this camera as a gift, so far it has worked great and taken great pictures. I would recommend it!

The HP M307 digital camera looked very promising. It had a nice compact size, the controls were laid out very well and I liked the fact that it used standard AA batteries rather than a proprietary battery pack. My enthusiasm began to wane as soon as I started taking pictures with the camera.

After unboxing the camera, I chose to install some recently charged NIMH batteries that I had available. After taking only 5 or 6 photos, I got a low battery warning and the camera shut down. I was a little perplexed because I was pretty sure the batteries were fully charged. My other point and shoot digital camera, a Canon using 4 AA batteries lasts a very very long time before needing battery replacement. Nonetheless, I recharged the batteries and the next day, reinstalled the definitely fully charged batteries. After taking about 25 photos, the batteries were depleted again. I should mention that I was not using the LCD to view the photos which would have contributed to faster battery drain. The battery drain was just from using the camera to take photos.

The software that is provided with the camera is virtually worthless on a Macintosh computer. I had a lot of trouble getting any of the software to work as advertised. Finally I gave up with the HP software and used iPhoto to upload, view and manipulate the images. And the images needed a lot of manipulation because virtually every single "people" picture where the flash fired, the eyes had "red-eye". In all fairness, this is quite common to all small cameras where the flash is so close to the lens. Red-eye is caused by the flash reflecting out of the eyes of the person you are taking the picture of. The closer the flash is to the lens, the worse the red-eye will be. This is why professional cameras usually have flash units that are well above the lens.

The camera has a scant amount of built-in memory. So little that it might as well not have any at all. But in a pinch, you can take a few pictures without any other memory card. But you will certainly want to buy a larger capacity
SD card for the camera. It would have been nice if HP had included a SD card, but alas they did not.

The camera was easy to learn how to use. The buttons were logically placed and intuitive to operate. The on-off button was difficult to grasp though and I constantly had trouble trying to turn the camera on or off because the button was fairly smooth and it was not easy to get enough friction on it to operate it.

The camera was advertised as having audio annotation which really appealed to me. How cool it would be to attach a short audio file to a photo to describe the circumstances under which the photo was taken. Unfortunately this feature only works if you use the HP software which was basically useless.

Another problem I had with the camera was the extremely poor audio quality of the sound in movie mode. It is a great feature to be able to take movies with the camera, but the audio in the movie was very poor quality with an obnoxious buzz and whine throughout the entire audio portion of the movie.

Another huge oversight in the design of this camera was the failure to include a video output jack to enable you to view the camera photos on a television set.

The little flap of plastic which covers the USB port would never stay closed and was always flopping around. I'm surprised it hasn't broken off yet, but I'm sure it will eventually.

I can not recommend this camera to anyone. There are many other far superior digital cameras out there these days. I'd recommend looking at the Canon A75...an excellent camera with better features, far superior battery life and a much better overall fit and finish.

I bought this camera for my daughter while on vacation in Europe. Alas, only when I left, I discovered that the camera has a defect. And guess what, the HP warranty in the country I now live in (where it costs twice as much which was the reason I bought it abroad in the first place), doesn't cover anything because I bought it in another country.

The problem with the camera is that it takes very few pictures before it gives me the message that battery power is low, then it turns off. But when I then place the batteries in my Sony digital camera, it works fine and shows that the batteries are either fully charged, or half charged. In any case, it takes very long time before I have to change the same batteries that my HP said did not have any more power.

I contacted HP online services, and via email they gave me excellent feedback and they did try to help me solve the problem in different ways and with different means. As a matter of fact, I could download firmware, which should take care of the problem on my camera (which means that many people have had the same problem). Despite all the support they gave me, which was nothing short of excellent, my camera still has the problem. Now, I will have to find an HP service center, and pay whatever it costs despite that it is only 2 months old, or just keep 10 sets of batteries at hand...

Other than that, I think the camera is fine, especially if it is for beginners. It is easy to navigate through the menus, the LCD screen has a nice size, and it has many different functions. The only thing with the design is that I frequently get confused when trying to turn it on, because of the location of the on/off switch.

If it were not for the battery issue, I would have given the camera a rating of 4. But this is a very important issue and very relevant to the functioning of the camera!

I wish I could give this camera NEGATIVE 10 stars!!!

The screen died on me after a few months of use. I did not drop it or anything--it just froze up and went black. It acted like it was taking a picture, but there was no picture. HP said it was a 'hardware' issue, so they sent me another one. A month after my year warranty was up (keep in mind that this replacement camera was NOT a year old, but my year warranty from my original purchase date was up), it happened again. Basically, both of these cameras did not last a year.

Plus, the camera EATS batteries, and the connection to the computer via USB sometimes wouldn't work, which I've read elsewhere this is a common problem with this camera.

DON'T BUY IT! Try a Canon instead. My sister swears by Canon and has not been disappointed. I should have listened to her, but I thought HP would be more compatible with my computer. Boy, I was WRONG!!!

This is my first digital camera. I dont know why everyone has been giving it such low ratings, I think it a really nice little camera for what I paid to get it.

All of the controls are pretty easy to figure out, it takes only about 30 minutes of screwing around to get it.

Im able to keep upwards of 700 photos or an hour and a half of video on the thing because Ive got a 1GB SD card though.

Batteries will work for a long time if you use better batteries.

There are defineately better cameras than this one, but they are higher priced. This is my first camera, and Ive taken alot of really nice photos sofar, and it has not given me trouble once in the months that I have been using it.

This camera was a big disappointment. It is my first, and so far, only digital camera. My sister has a different brand camera and whenever we have family get-togethers, I have to have her email me the pictures or put them on a CD for me. I won't even bother to bring my own digital camera....the flash hardly ever goes off!!! I have tried different batteries...AA and rechargeable and it makes no difference. I am 100% sure the batteries are fully charged and the flash rarely goes off...even if I have it set to "Flash On"....And, like some other reviewers have said, the battery life does not last long and there is very little space on the camera itself for pictures. An SD card is a must, but I would not recommend this camera to my worst enemy. Sorry, but that has been my experience. On the few occasions that the flash actually DID go off, the pictures did come out great, though. Frustrating to use when you are about to take a great picture and NO flash. No fun.

I have had three of these cameras, and the first two were duds out of the box. I finally received a replacement from HP that lasted beyond the 90 days warranty. Now six months later, the replacement has quit working. I contacted HP, only to be told, "Sorry, you should have called during the warranty period." Perhaps they make some cameras that are better, but it would appear that after three cameras, I would at least get fortunate enough to get one to last longer than a few months. I will definitely be looking elsewhere for my next camera.

If you buy this camera and have good success, then good for you. If you haven't bought it, at least consider looking elsewhere. Also, read this review (http://www.anandtech.com/printarticle.aspx?i=2286), and note the "Final Words" section at the end.

Finally, the M307 cameras I have had were replacements for the original 635 model I had purchased. I did like that camera's overall image quality. Just too bad it didn't last past eight months, and the replacements less than that. My Nikon N65 SLR is still going strong, so I will await to get a digital SLR by Nikon.

This camera would be an excellent camera for beginners, if it weren't for one thing: Batteries.
In July, while on vacations, I bought this camera for my daughter. It looked wonderful, but the problems started soon. After a very short time, the camera gave the message that battery power was low, and then it turned off. The first time, I changed the batteries. A few pictures more, and the same thing happened again. This time, I put the batteries in another digital camera of another brand that I own, which shows how much power is left. I then used my other camera for a long time with these batteries, so I came to the conclusion that something was wrong with the camera.
Back in the country I live in, I contacted HP online via their e-mail service. The support was excellent and they did try to help me solve the problem. But bad luck for me: Nothing worked. The firmware they created for fixing this problem, was already installed on my camera, and after downloading it again, the camera still has the same problem. HP then told me that my camera needs service. The only problem is, that even if the camera still is in its warranty period, I can't use it, because I bought it in another country very far away.
I also owned another HP camera a long time ago, and it also had problems, but this time after the warranty expired. I'm very little likely to buy HP cameras again!

To HP and all other companies, I'd recommend them to give worldwide warranty on their products. People travel a lot nowadays, and frequently buy products in another country.

As some already mentioned, battery life is not long, but with a couple of rechargeable batteries, you should be fine. After all, you will have a descent camera at a low price!

Purchased two cameras. Scratches on both, one doesn't work at all. Never buy reconditioned products.