The previous reviews don't seem hands-on, but just a review of the published features. I bought one from Sony immediately, got it and used it for a couple of hours. Here are my experiences:

Removed from box, looks good! Silver is a nice color.

Unwrapped charger and plugged it in. Charge light comes on, great! Charge light goes off. Uh-oh! There was either something wrong with the jack in the camera, or the charging plug. I had to hold it in a certain position to keep it charging. Well, don't condemn it yet, see how it works. I put the camera down, and laid the charge cable just so and it maintained contact and continued to charge for about 10 minutes, then it stopped again. I moved the cable around some more until the charge light came back on and carefully did not move it again. I came back an hour later and the light was off again, but hopefully I got a decent charge.

Now time to check it out.
I put in the Memory Stick Duo Mark 2, flip open the LCD screen, which is actually quite nice. Hit power button and the camera boots up quickly, now we are getting somewhere!

The date/time menu comes up. I fumble for a couple of seconds trying to figure out how to set it. Thats done, now lets take some video. I am inside, it is night time, in my fairly well lit kitchen. I took some sample vids on each of the shooting modes, and close up with the LED video light on. Then I plugged the component cables into my 42" HDTV and play back the samples. It was extremely disappointing, with grainy blocky pixels on the screen. Even when standing far back from the screen. I know this was never meant to be a camcorder replacement, but still, it was that bad (video from a fairly well lit indoor scene).

The next day, I went outside to test out the camera in a bright outside setting. Picture quality significantly better all around. This camera does not perform well indoors with normal lighting. Outside in bright lighting it is a champ.

Write speed to the Mark 2 memory stick was very fast, no issues here.

Zoom and Focusing: The camera zoom and focusing is very fast and the zoom is pretty spectacular for such a small and inexpensive camera.

Playback: The footage from outside was very clear and looked great. Unfortunately, you hear the focusing mechanism and zoom mechanism throughout the video playback. A constant tick tick tick noise was picked up via the mic for the entire time I was panning the camera and/or zooming.

Build Quality: The camera is what it is, an inexpensive web video camera. Don't expect anything near to typical Sony build quality. It is cheap and it shows. Plus I had the issue with the power jack, and another issue with the charging cord I saw when I was packing it up to return it. The overmolded wire on the charger was split right at the stress relief, exposing copper wires to the world. This was due to the fact that the plastic was so thin, it just split open. This is how it was received. The buttons are also very cheap feeling.

Button Layout: The buttons are not laid out well, and are difficult to operate - you really need two hands to do it.

Software: The included software is fine for the intended users, quick, easy to figure out, and is right in the camera's on-board memory to install on any PC you connect it to. It isn't a feature rich video editing application. It is there to download, do minor edits and post to the web, which it seems to do just fine.

File Format: Sony specific wrapper on an MP4 video format.

LCD Screen: Very nice for the size and cost of the camera. It turns around so you can film yourself.

Sound: The mic is excellent, clear and picks up stereo sound. Unfortunately it also picks up all the sounds of the focusing and zoom mechanisms.

If you are looking for a cheap alternative for an HD video camera to capture those precious moments, this isn't it, and to be fair, Sony never claimed that it was - they don't even refer to it as a camcorder. If you need a camera to take random vids, and post them to the web, this is an excellent choice. I got unlucky with the power/charging issue. It may not even matter if you use the USB charging capabilities anyway, but it was still pretty disappointing for a Sony product.

It comes with composite out cables to connect it to your HD tv, a very nice feature!

Conclusion: This is a great alternative to the Creative vado and flip MinoHD, IF you want the zoom capability. It is much larger than those cameras though, not a pocket cam. I also have a Flip MinoHD, which has significantly better low light performance, but falls short against the very nice zoom capabilities of the Sony CM1 Webbie. In bright, well lit scenes, the video is quite amazing if you can live with the clicking noise on the playback. Since one of the uses of the camera would be for video blogging, it seems that the low light performance should be a lot better, but it was horrible, at least on the camera I received. Hopefully, Sony will work out these issues and the camera will do well. However, it seems to me that you can get a really nice flash SD camcorder for $50 more, and if you don't really need HD video, they would be a better choice. In fact, there are a couple of SD Flash camcorders that are the same size or smaller than the Webbie!

I tried taking stills, but could not find them quickly in the camera memory or the memory stick and I wasn't keeping it so I didn't try to figure it out.

In the end, I returned the camera due to the defect in the charger, the horrible low light performance, and the awkward button layout.