Great Camcorder!

I am not a super user, but I am really happy with this camcorder so far. I bought it to video indoor horseback riding. So, I was concerned with low light environments. This camcorder outperformed my expectations. After reading most of the reviews on the lower end camcorders, I figured the video would be dark. In fact, the video appears lighter than my memory of the location. I videoed on the LP speed to get more time on the tape and although the colors were not as good as on the SP, the video was still good although a bit grainy. Additionally, this camera has the best microphone of the various camcorders I have experience with. It picked up the clinician voice from her speaker @ 100 feet away, far better than the older models. I did not have to turn my TV all the way up to hear it - just turned it up to the usual TV viewing range.

My only complaint is that the remote doesn't work from behind the camcorder. The zoom on the top is so sensitive it is difficult to zoom smoothly at further distances. It does have the great feature of zoom buttons on the LCD panel!

I have not attempted to use the software yet or download to my computer. I will update this when I do.

* Update: Ok, so here is where things get difficult. If you want to make rinky-dink movies, the product that comes with the camcorder uses USB and is super easy to use. BUT - I wanted to make a movie with no jerky digital effects. So, I spent hours trying to get the firewire card to work on my laptop and never did get my computer recognizing the camcorder. I guess I can't blame the camcorder completely, but the software that comes with doesn't appear to be able to utilize firewire at all. So, I am disappointed with this part of the product.