This camcorder has been reviewed by several experts and has received very good recommendations. See for yourself at www.dvspot.com or www.camcorderinfo.com.
As for the reviewer that complained about the firewire...ALL digital camcorders use firewire for video transfer to a computer since USB only has a transefer rate of 1,1 Mb/s vs Firewire which has a rate of 400Mb/s. 4 minutes of finished video takes up 4 Gb!!
Nobody would want to transfer video using USB 1. NOBODY, not Sony, JVC, Panasonic, or Canon ships their camcorder with a firewire cable ($14,99 Amazon.com). Please get your facts right before you give a great camcorder 3 stars.

I bought this camcorder recently and I am satisfied with its performace. The only reason I am taking off a few ** (stars) from this product is due to the reason that you cannot transfer videos from MiniDV to your computer using USB port. It required IEEE 1394 firewire cable (Cannon does not supply this cable with the camcorder) and a computer which has compatible port (not common in many computers and so you end up buying a suitable card for your computer if you wish to transfer the videos).

I like the features this camcorder has, and I have to confess I didn't buy mine on Amazon and so might have gotten a different kind or quality (my box said "kit" on it, and that mystified me a bit); I don't give it full stars because the picture quality just seems average instead of bright and sharp. The analog to digital conversion feature is getting hard to find in camcorders, and lets you run VHS tapes from your VCR through the camcorder and into a PC, and that's a major plus with this machine.

This is only the second camcorder I have owned. I've had it for about 2 months. So far, it has exceeded my expecations. I haven't gotten into the details of what you can do with it. But, the picture and the sound on the camcorder have been great. I would definitely recommend it.

I have not used this camcorder very much at all in the past two years I've had it. I've maybe recorded about 10 tapes with it and watched a few back on playback. Today I was getting it ready to film the birth of our second child and all of a sudden a message came up telling me to "Remove Cassette Immediately". I pushed the eject button and the cassette is totally stuck and will not move. I called Canon and they told me it would be around $150 to fix. I researched other blogs and electronics trouble shooting websites and read several comments from others with this exact same problem. VERY DISAPPOINTED!