I've had this camera for about three months now. I've taken some great shots with it, and I'm impressed with how sharp the photos can be, especially if I use a tripod to hold it steady. But it is much more complicated to use than the old Kodal DC215 Zoom that I had before. I agree with all its good points mentioned by previous reviewers.
Now for some complaints. It eats alkaline batteries like there's no tomorrow. The cheap, factory-provided alkalines that came with the camera checked good on my multimeter, but the camera repeatedly shut down and gave a low-power indication on the LCD screen as soon as I powered it up. At first I thought the camera was defective, but then I then tried the most powerful NiMH AA batteries I could find (Power 2400 mAH). The camera liked them and has behaved itself ever since. And the extra power allows me to shoot two to three dozen photos (using the High Quality setting) before the batteries are exhausted.
But you can't just punch the shutter button and expect to take a sharp photo. You have to press the shutter button halfway, let the camera do its autofocusing first, and then press the shutter button the rest of the way. Otherwise the picture turns out noticably blurry - so much for those quick Kodak moment-type shots.
And the most irritating of all, you have to make sure that the camera has finished saving the previous photo to memory before you try taking another photo or the whole operating system basically freezes and ignores whatever setting you put the mode switch in. At times I have had to physically open the battery compartment in order to get the camera to cycle power because it ignored the fact that I had set the power/mode knob to off. And speaking of the power/mode knob, yes, it is EXTREMELY easy to bump it from Power Off to Auto without ever knowing it. It's situated right on the edge of the camera, and you can't casually slip the camera into a pocket without accidentally rotating the knob. I've actually had it power iself on while I was walking with the camera hanging by its shoulder strap. Fortunately the camera can be set to automatically power down after a preset period of non-use. I chose to have the Power-On sound play whenever it powers up so that I know when it happens. But a better design, such as having to hold the knob down before you can rotate it would help tremendously. Very poor design.
And finally, macro shots are a joke. You have to use the LCD screen for macro shots, but it's too small to be useful for determining when your subject is razor-sharp or out of focus. The best that the user manual says is a minimum limit of 16 cm from your subject for macro, but that's hard to judge without a ruler, and often that's not close enough for really close-up shots.