12.1 megapixels? I guess this will help sell the camera to people who have no clue the lens will probably never deliver a sharp enough image to the sensor to warrant even 8 megapixels (not just because of the lens quality, but also because of imperfect focus, camera shake, etc.). Oh well, lots of noise and poor low-light performance is a small price to pay for the ability to market a lot of pixels.

I'm a little stuck on sRAW cutting the number of pixels to 1/4th... First, I'm surprised that only cuts the file size in half, second I'm surprised it retains "all of the flexibility of full-sized RAW images"... I'd think a full-sized image would be a more flexible for cropping and enlargements, since there's for times more data to generate detail in the image. Or did you mean all the flexibility except for a loss in detail?

"This has dropped the Prius’s EPA down by 25 percent to an average of 45mpg. This now puts the Toyota within spitting distance of cars like the Chevy Aveo, which costs less then half what the Prius costs."

Wait, the government's website www.fueleconomy.gov says the Prius gets 55mpg (combined) and the manual tranny Aveo gets 30mpg (combined). If these numbers aren't accurate, I'm sure the are inaccurate for both cars by similar amounts. Thus the article is straight out lying when it asserts the Aveo is close to the Prius in fuel economy. One of many errors in the article.

I am so pissed that someone copied and pasted the horribly erroneous "opinion" piece written by a student and called it an article. There's a blog where he admits he threw it together in 30 minutes. This student-written article was a regurgitation of a couple of erroneous articles published in the past year. You can rest assured this article is full of crap for the following reasons:

QUOTE: "The Prius costs an average of $3.25 per mile driven over a lifetime of 100,000 miles - the expected lifespan of the Hybrid."

This means someone who drives 20,000 miles per year for five years would pay $56K each year in total car expenses ($325K in five years), which is obviously incorrect. This gives you a sense at how non-factual the entire article is.

The article also bases its conclusions on the foundation that a Hummer's life-span is 300,000 miles, while a that of a Prius is only 100,000 miles. There is no basis for either of these lifetime estimates. It's been shown there are plenty of Prius Taxis that have exceeded that number (with original batteries). Also, Hummers are some of Consumer Reports worst rated cars based on "reliability history," while the Prius are among the highest rated. So which car do we really expect to drive longer?

QUOTE: “The acid rain around Sudbury was so bad it destroyed all the plants and the soil slid down off the hillside,” said Canadian Greenpeace energy-coordinator David Martin during an interview with Mail, a British-based newspaper.

This quote was talking about conditions before 1972! It's basically a hoax to attribute this quote to anything related to the nickel used by Toyota. Furthermore, I found out: Since 1972, Inco has reduced its sulfur dioxide emissions by more than 90 percent (as have the other mining companies in the area); and Inco and Sudburians have between them planted more than 11 million trees on more than 14,000 hectares.

Toyota uses less than 1% of the output of the Inco plant referenced in the article. Not to mention that about 90 percent of all new nickel sold each year goes into alloys, two-thirds going into stainless steel...

IN REGARDS TO CNW:
The CNW numbers are so far divorced from reality, so many orders of magnitude wrong, that you lend them credence by treating them as if there were any substance there.

If everyone in America drove a Toyota Corolla, which is a pretty efficient little car as straight-gas cars go, then, based on the CNW "energy cost per mile", the total "energy cost" of our driving would amount to about two-thirds of the entire US gross domestic product. Alternatively, if we take the CNW numbers at face value, the total "energy cost" of our driving would be over 20 times the value of total US fossil fuel consumption, for all reasons.

So, the CNW numbers are total nonsense.

Basically, CNW says that every year, US cars consume 20x more fossil fuel energy than the US actually consumes, in total, for all reasons. It doesn't matter how they got those numbers. The results show that they are total, illogical, impossible, unmitigated horsesh*t, and they should be treated as such.

Me me me!!!

I sure would like to have a free camera!

When an actual nuclear power plant safety inspector explains to me in detail my how unsafe his plant is, I get the feeling it is MUCH less than 100% safe. We haven't even figured out a permanent way to store spent fuel rods, which will remain radioactive for thousands of years, and are filling up cooling pools in power plants across the country. I don't know what the answer to our energy problems are, but all I ask is, when people consider the various options, they don't treat nuclear power as if it is anywhere close to 100% safe. But feel free to move next door to one if you're not at all concerned.

Even if Ethanol is a net loser, the way it is sparingly used in this engine seems like it still is a NET GAIN IN EFFICIENCY when compared to a regular gas engine. Someone school me if I'm wrong (as I'm sure you will)... And if I'm right, why are you "ethanol is net loser" people so focused on that issue and not looking at the bigger picture???

What ever happened to those super high capacity holographic data cards?

Crap, I actually bought one of these for surfing, and I'm VERY disappointed. I've taken surf photos with a consumer digital camera and water-housing and had lots of success, so I know it's not just me. With this camera, out of 200 photos taken, about 3 have been usable, but still looked crappy.