I didn't have this camera on my radar initially. I'm wary of Sony cameras after my first digital camera, a small Sony Cybershot (DSC-W70) I'd bought a few years ago suddenly stopped working about a year after I'd bought it. After that came another "slim" $100 - $200 price range camera which I had a for a few years. I finally decided to move up in this world and move to a "bridge" camera - ie. the range of cameras between the small point and shoot on one end and the full blown SLRs on the other end. I decided to try a Canon, since a friend of mine has a Canon Powershot which takes amazing pictures. The Canon SX10IS had good reviews for a camera in this range and so going by reviews (and some impatience) I went ahead and bought it online. Then while tracking the order on Amazon, i came across the Sony HX1 - it costed $60 more than the Canon, but it had everything the Canon had and more... I was intrigued by the reviews and the features like Panorama and burst (which the Canon SX10 does not have) and so I canceled the order for the Canon and went into Best Buy the next day to compare the two side by side before I settled on the Sony HX1.A humble note on buying a camera here - I think its absolutely essential to go into a Fry's or Best Buy's and pickup and play around with the display model of a camera you have your eye on (and then go online and buy it for less, hehe). For example, the screen of the Canon SX10 IS is about a half inch smaller than the screen of the Sony HX1. I didn't think that to be a big deal while reading reviews and comparing the two, but in the store when I compared the Canon SX10 and Sony HX1 side by side, that extra half inch on the screen just made a heck of a lot of difference to the whole photo taking experience. The only feature where the Canon SX10 outdoes the Sony is the MegaPixels, the Canon SX10 IS is 12.1 while this camera is 9.1. Note that even when shooting with the resolution set to 9.1 MP, the file size is about 4 - 5 Mb. Thats a heck of a lot of space on my hard drive for a photo and so mainly for this reason, I probably won't be using a Camera on a setting of more than 5 or 6 MP for most every day shooting, and therefore the extra 3 MegaPixels that the Canon offered didn't mean a great deal to me.Another observation from my experience. When choosing a camera, I think its important to keep in mind what features of a Camera are important to YOU. What would you care about most in the camera. A good zoom? Ability to shoot movies in 1080 HD? Burst mode? Are you partial to a particular brand? etc... In this regard, I found that what I cared about in a might-purchase camera was 1) Good user reviews on pictures taken in the Auto and Scene modes 2) At least 20X zoom 3) Ability to shoot movies in 1080p HD. Once you have settled on a few parameters you care about, then the process of drilling down becomes very easy. Go to the main camera section of the site on Amazon and with the search menu on the left, you can start selecting parameters one at a time (price, zoom, brand, etc.), so as to drill down from the 1000+ cameras to three or four. For me, my drill-down search yielded the Canon SX10 and the Sony HX1 (and another Nikon and Olympus). The Sony won because for my search, in addition to having everything I wanted, and good reviews, it also had the extra features like panorama and burst that the Canon didn't have, plus screen size. I forget why I ruled out the Olympus, and the Nikon didn't make it because it didn't shoot movies.So since I've given this camera 5 stars, heres what I like most about the it.1) Great pictures*2) Extremely easy to use menu - very intuitively designed3) The zoom is quick4) Ergonomic design of the body - the placement of buttons and the "feel" of the camera is good5) Love the panorama and burst modes - as other reviewers have mentioned, the panorama mode works very easily and the photo comes out accurate - no mismatch or jagged stitches.*I'm still very new to this camera. I've taken about a 100 pictures so far, indoors and outdoors. The outdoor shots in good lighting are all excellent. I've yet to form an opinion on the indoor shots since I haven't taken that many yet.I will keep updating this review as I learn more about this camera. I also discovered that there's a Facebook group for this camera, to which people post their queries etc.With this camera I hope to explore the basics of photography and move out of the Auto mode and actually start fooling around with the ISO, aperture and shutter speed settings etc. Other reviewers have mentioned that if you know how to pull those levers skillfully, you can do most of the stuff you can do with an SLR on this camera. I hope this review helps you in your search. Good Luck! I have also posted some photos I've taken with this camera.Update- March 22nd 2010: I've now owned this camera for a few months and have taken lots of pictures. Everything I said above still holds good except for one small thing I've noticed which other folks have mentioned. On the auto(intelligent) mode, a lot of the times you do get the feeling that the pictures are a little over-processed- the pictures sometime look more colorful than the reality. While some folks may like this, I feel a bit deceived. Sometimes (particularly for indoor photos taken without the flash), the background light is overcompensated. No doubt all this is in the auto mode and may also happen on other cameras, but I thought its worth a mention. All in all for the other reasons mentioned, I still like the camera and would not have chosen differently if I could go back in time to when I bought this camera. And although I mentioned this in the original review, I have to say it again. The panorama mode is AWESOME, its just offf the friggin chain... I've taken some stunning pictures of the panoramas of Northern California with this mode.