Since there is no 'review' here's mine:
Time owned: 6 months
Most used shooting mode: Macro/Aperture Priority/scene-type shots
Pros:- A big zoom for quite a small camera
- Half-way house between Point and shoot and DSLR
- Simple menu system
- Clean images in good weather/outdoor
- Lots of modes to experiment with
- Big reviewing screen
Cons:- Manual focus mode I find is difficult to use
- low light shots seem a little grainier than I see on other people's cameras
- Sometimes modes I change in Shutter-priorty remain once I go into Aperture priority and make it hard if I end up in a 'messed up' setup
- Slow upload speeds to computer (compared to Finepix which is also a 6mp camera)
To see shows look at my Flickr-pages, if people want I will try to figure out how to embed photos into the thread to try show off what I think are the best shots i've got from this.
Overview
It's nice having that big zoom at times and I have managed to get a lot of shots that i wouldn't otherwise. For the most part it works as expected and is simple enough to use and has helped me to start thinking more about aperture/shutter/making the move to full manual settings. Having used a friend's camera with a manual 'ring' (is that the term?) I would love to have that feature because it felt much easier to adjust focus in manual-mode compared to the manual-focus on offer.
Having not tried the direct competitors I cannot say for sure, but the price of the camera was very good and whilst not without flaws overally it has been a pleasure to own.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ny156uk