Comments about Sony Sony DCR-SR68 80GB HDD High Def Handycam Camcorder, Carl Zeiss Vario-Tessar Lens, 60x Optical/2000x Digital Zoom Lens, 2.7" Touch Panel LCD - Blue:

I purchased this last Friday due to a stock "mishap" at a local store. It was not supposed to be out yet! I love it.

*Pros*

Coming from a former TRV-460, this takes a far better video. The picture is crisp and clear, the colors are vibrant, there is no graininess like our Flip cam. It has a slight bit of choppyness in very fast moving videos when blown up on my 42" TV after DVD conversion, but not enough to put me off, Just remember the price!

The software works with 64bit win7 with no issues. Sony's motion picture browser is much improved over the older versions and it works great to capture, edit and burn the movies from the camera. It even imports photos from memory cards if you want it to.

The face recognition is just too cool. It works. It recognizes a face and put a square around it and optimizes the video settings to the face and not the surroundings. You can also tag videos by person once you train the software.

The touchscreen menus are still great, my old TRV-460 had a better interface with bigger buttons, but these are still easy to use and navigation through the menu screens is nothing if not obvious.

The zoom on this camera is amazing, the optical is enough for me so I leave digital zoom turned off. The steadyshot can keep up with you out to about 50x before it gets too shaky. full zoom on a tripod is excellent.

Finally a Sony camera that can take SD cards along with pro duo cards.

The zoom microphone is great. The mic is VERY sensitive and was able to pick up my kids whispering. Cool.

*CONS
The still photos are not good at all, but I didn't buy it for that. 640x480 is unacceptable for photos with today's technology though.

Hard drives have their limitations. They do not like shock, cold, heat, vibrations...the list goes on. I will treat it like any other camera though in the hopes that it can do all that my old one did. I really think it will but I have to worry about the longevity of a hard drive in such a portable device.