This is a great camera. If you're in looking in the $200 price range, this is definitely worth a look.

It takes great outdoor shots. It's very easy to use. I didn't even use the owners manual, and was taking surprisingly good shots within no time.

The Canon has a very nice feel if your hand. The shutter lag is minimal. I didn't find it to be annoying due to lengthy lags between when you press the shutter button and when it captures the image. I like to shoot outdoors on sunny days, and this seems to be what this camera is biased toward. If you shoot a lot indoors, there are reports of long time lags for the flash to recharge, and not so great photos in dim light situations. But if you mainly want to take pictures outdoors, you should be very pleased.

The 6X optical zoom really opens up a new world of possibilities. Shots that I would have given up on with a lesser zoom turned out really well. and with Canon's image stabilization, you won't need to worry about a blurred image because a little camera movement was magnified because you're zoomed way it. It all works together really well. 

There is the ability to override the automatic shutter settings, so if you want to play around with the settings like a pro would, you got a lot of fun stuff to experiment with.

The camera comes with alkaline AA batteries, so it is worth investing in rechargeables. I've had good luck with Duracell rechargeables, and used 2500 mAh with good results. The door to access the batteries and the memory card could be a little more rugged, so I'd probably remove the image files with the supplied cable and not remove the card too much to reduce the chance of damaging the access door. windows XP recognized the camera without even using the supplied software CD.

Photos will follow, but here's a few for now.

Some of the goodies on this Canon include:

Image stabilization

old fashion view finder, in addition to the digital screen

uses regular AA batteries; if you need a spare set, it's easy to find extra batteries at a store

 8.0 megapixel resolution

face detection