The Bad
* After owning the camera for roughly one month I noticed that half of the lens shield occasionally did not close. I was forced to take the camera back to Sam's Club to exchange it for an identical model.
* The camera does not have a "hold" button and is very easy to accidentally turn on by pressing one of several buttons. Don't even think about carrying this camera around lose in your pocket or purse as it will turn on and attempt to extend its lens when you are least expecting it. If the lens cannot be fully extended, such as in a pocket, the camera will beep but will not attempt to retract the lens. You'll have to stop the car on the side of the highway and get out so that you can stand up to carefully wiggle the camera with partially extended lens out of your pocket. I had no problems keeping my previous digital camera in my pocket for years. You'll need to carry this camera inside a hard case or special camera bag. You might also get away with removing the batteries and placing the batteries back in later but this kind of work removes a lot of spontaneity from your photography.
* The camera comes with a 256 MB SD card. The cost of the 256 MB SD card (as of the date of camera manufacture) is factored into the camera price. I already own a 1 GB SD card, a 256 MB SD card, and a 128 MB SD card. I resent having to pay for this 256 MB SD card which I will never use. Perhaps I could spend some time reselling the 256 MB SD card but it's hardly worth it and I wouldn't be able to return the camera if the lens cover ever acted up again.
* The camera claims to work with up to a 1 GB SD card. As of May, 2006 you could purchase a 1 GB SD card online for $20 USD from Buy.com. Why won't my $300 camera accept more than $20 worth of memory at a time? At the time I purchased the camera I was intending to purchase a 4 GB SD card for it until I read the manual. I suppose I could spend $75 to buy 3 more 1 GB SD cards memory cards but I don't want to keep up with which ones I have used and which ones I haven't, swap them out in the middle of taking photos, tell my computer to download images four times instead of just one, etc, etc. I also feel that the stack of 1 GB SD cards will end up collecting dust (like my 128 MB card) a good 12-18 months before a single 4 GB SD card would.
* To connect the camera to your USB port on your computer you need a special proprietary cord instead of one of the standard USB cords available locally. I use my camera for both business and personal purposes which means I have to keep dragging this special cord around between my home computer and work computer. Think of taking the cord back and forth as roughly a doubling of camera size. Of course I could shell out for an additional cord but I refuse to monetarily reward this sort of nonsense.
* There is no way to enter personal information into the camera so that if an honest party discovered the camera they could contact you. The serial number is on an easily removed sticker and does not appear on any of the menu screens. If my camera was stolen, and I knew where it was, I don't think there is any way I would be able to prove it was "my camera" to the police.
* When taking video the camera stops recording sound if the zoom feature is used for the duration of the time the lens is extending or retracting.
* There is no "raw" uncompressed photo mode.
* The camera does not have a viewfinder, which I would not mind except there is no way to turn off the screen to conserve battery life or increase stealth.
* The camera image files names are numbered. When I purchased the camera I wanted to start my image numbers where my old camera left off but could not. When I exchanged the camera I was again forced to reset my image numbering scheme.
The Good
* Most importantly the camera is "8.1 mega pixels" with a cost of less than $300.00 and does not use proprietary or built-in batteries and memory. It runs well on two AA NiMH batteries and accepts standard SD Memory Cards. These attributes were the major deciding factors in my purchasing decision.
* The camera captures sound and video, albeit only at VGA resolution (640x480).
* Transferring files between the camera and Fedora Linux was effortless.
A special note: This review contains a large number of "Bad" points in comparison to the number of "Good" points. Please do not let that fool you into thinking that I give the camera a poor overall review. On the contrary, I think the Samsung camera is MUCH better than the Sony POS that I have previous experience with and would highly recommend it to anyone giving it an overall rating of 4 out of 5 stars.