I bought this camera because I thought it looked nicer that the Ixus that I wanted. The deal on the shiny blue one with a 16Mb card was too good to resist (relative to the Ixus), but I think the £500 I paid is probably a little steep, but when you're buying something new and close to the top of its range, you have to pay for it.

Since Xmas 2000 when I was allowed to unwrap it, I must have about 300 pictures and little chunks of video stored. This is helped by the fact that we have a new baby to take pictures of, but this is where the digital camera comes into its own. You can take loads of pictures, then bin the ones you don't like, without having to wait for your pictures to come back from Boots.

The camera itself is simplicity itself to use - once you've figured it out. Its easy to use if you want to point and press, but if you want to fiddle around with the exposure and whatnot, a short trip to the manual is needed, but really only once as its menu system is good and easy.

The picture quality can be very, very good. A lot of pictures came out blurry at first, but that is because they were taken in low light and the camera can get down to a slow exposure time. Once the basics of digital photography were learnt (hold it very steady for about a second) then the quality improved dramatically.

Getting the pictures onto my PC is really easy. Its simply a case of plugging the camera into the USB lead that I leave attached to the PC, switching it on and the software starts up and shows me the pictures on the camera. Drag and drop them onto the hard disk and its done.

I haven?t had a chance/reason to use the MP3 player aspect of the camera because you can?t mix pictures and sound on the same card. What would be great would be the ability to load the card with music and delete songs one at once when I want to take pictures. I could always buy another card or two, but I spent all my money on the ca
mera!

The upshot is that I?m really pleased with it, but having never owned a digital camera before, I have nothing to really compare it with. Its small and light and can get everywhere, so I use it a lot and maybe will get my money?s worth.