I got this as a 20th birthday present because I'm going on vacation in a few weeks. This little camera is awesome, its so easy my little brother and sister have no problems using it, they are 7 and 8 years old!! The point and shoot capabilities I think out weigh the lack of a zoom. Hopefully in the future these micro cameras will be zoom friendly but honestly the HD quality is sharp enough that I can use my video editing program to zoom. The gold box deal on this camera made it too good to pass up. I love that I can have it in my jeans pocket and if i see something exciting or worth filming i can just pull it out and be filming within 5 secounds. compared to the other cameras like it on the market this one is probably the best. I say that because I have used the flip at my college and although video quality is about the same i found the flips software very frustrating and kind of a rip off. I like creatives version of the software. Very simple to copy any movies right onto your hard drive in mp4 format, also with the software you can take any frame and make it a picture, the picture is not high resolution like a 7mp camera but i think its good enough and you get to choose which frame is a picture!! which is pretty cool because its like you have always snapped the photo at the perfect time. I did a little research and a 720p photo is about the same as a 1mp camera which is fine because most computers can only display a 1.5mp picture any ways but camera makers don't want you to know that. Honestly anything over 3mp is completely useless. Any way very solid camera, easy to use, feature risk for being so simple, shoots great video, can get a little blurry in lower light, looks great on my big screen tv. way more then what i expected from creative technologies but a solid product.Get more detail about Creative Labs Vado HD 8 GB Pocket Video Camcorder, 2nd Generation (Black Gloss with Maroon Accents) NEWEST MODEL.