I'm so glad I bought this camera

I haven't had this camera too long yet, but so far it's been great. I did a lot of reading about digital cameras and spoke to several sales people and asked a lot of questions before I finally settled on this one. One thing that I really like about this one is that it has both optical zoom and optical image stabilization. From what I've learned, optical is better/more desirable than digital. I didn't find many cameras in this price range that have optical for both. And they both work great. The 5x optical zoom lets me take a picture of something across the room and it's looks like I'm only a few feet away, and the image is still amazingly clear. Another cool thing is that there are a TON of different preset settings for taking pictures in various situations. There's a setting to take optimal photos at the beach, at night, of sunsets or fireworks, of babies, for taking portraits, for taking self portraits, for sports, for candlelight, for parties, and more. There are a ton of other cool features. The camera also takes video. It has a rechargeable lithium battery. A lot of cameras in this price range take regular batteries, which in my experience suck in digital cameras.