I bought a digital camera about twelve months ago. I started with a Praktika, having had many years good and faithful service from my old Praktika SLR. I was very disappointed with the results. Like the guy above said, you couldn't use the viewfinder in bright sunlight, and it simply ate batteries. After a one week trial I returned it to the store and exchanged it for a Sanyo VPC-G250E with which I've been absolutely delighted. It cost £289 including software, spare batteries and charger. It uses smart media for storage. Number of pictures depends upon selected resolution but I get typically 50-60 pictures on a 4Mb card. Extra 4Mb cards cost around £10 here, and seem to be better value that the bigger capacity cards on a £per Mb basis. Battery life is excellent, and the camera offers "ACTION"mode of ten frames per second, or even the ability to take short video clips of about 5 secs each. Digital zoom operates only on low resolution setting though. Editing is provided on camera with ability to scan action or video clips and save selected frames as stills, discarding the clips to free up space. One picture can be placed as an inset ito another if required, and short sound bytes can be added to shots. Transfer to PC is by cable connection to the serial port.