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I've had this camera for over a year and I love it (2010-03-24)
I am not a professional photographer, but I've taken lots of photos with several digital cameras over the years.
I love this one because it's quite versatile. The quality of the pictures is pretty good and you can shoot video clips in HD. You don't need to carry a digital camera and a separate video recorder in your vacation trips, just this little camera in your pocket. You can create very good quality videos of your vacations with the pictures and clips that you get with this compact camera using windows movie maker, Roxio Creator and other free or inexpensive software. The only negative is the battery life, so you'd need to buy a couple of spare batteries to take with you.

Worst Camera I ever purchased! (2010-02-17)
I have owned several Sony products. We purchased this camera last year and I have never been happy with it! The battery life is HORRIBLE!!!!! We even purchased an extra battery and we still could not go for an entire day on our vacation and take pictures! The quality of the pictures is great but the battery life ruins this entire product! I would NOT recommend this camera!

Had it for a year and a half with no problems (2010-02-16)
I've owned this thing for almost 2 years now and it's still going strong. i use it primarily for video but i still snap a few pics here and there. it does a nice job, not the BEST for pictures but for the most part the pics are clear and sharp (i use the black and white mode a lot). the video mode is where this thing earns its stripes. they come out beautiful, i can take screens from my videos that look better than pics from other cameras. Optical zoom while shooting keeps everything in focus too which is great.
i didn't give it 5 stars because it does have some problems. they're all things i can deal with though.....
it doesn't let you record a video over ten minutes, so you have to split clips every now and then. i got used to that by now.
battery life kinda sucks. usually it lasts about 35 mins for me (with the screen brightness at lowest), so you need extra battery's for sure. not that expensive, i picked up two on amazon for 24 bucks.
taking stills while shooting video is kinda pointless. it doesn't take them in any higher resolution than 1280 x 720 so why not just take a screenshot after the fact?

but the pros out weigh the cons big time. i've dropped this thing a ton of times and it still works fine and looks like new. the fact that the lens doesn't come out is great (all my canon's broke due to lens failure). it's lasted me longer than any cam i've ever owned and it still kicks ass on a daily basis. probably not as good as the t900 but the construction feels more rugged on the t500 i gotta say.

Owner For a Year (2009-12-27)
Great poetability, great outdoor Pics awsome video as well. However don't buy the camera for photography. It's more of a all around camera with the video going on. I can't get a decent looking picture in low light unless the camera is stbelized (can you imagine a pocket cam on a tripod lol) anyway you can place it on top of something though. Indoors the pictures are nice if upclose with the flash. In both cases however I find noise. The macro is really nice though and aside from those previous mentioned issues, (oh and yea the battery sucks too), the camera takes really nice pics. Outdoor sunny pics are amazing and so is the video quality. Buy it for the features and portability(I have mine on me all the time). As for pic quality you can buy something much cheaper with way better quality.

Good camera, bad reliability (2009-12-13)
I have been using this camera for more than a year. Before explaining the issue that I experienced recently, a few points below:
pros:
- good picture quality in environment with enough light (unlike some of the other reviewers think). vivid and vibrant color. I have at least 2 cameras that I can compare: Olympus 7010 and Canon SLR 450D. Much better focus and picture than Olympus and almost comparable with Canon 450D.
- very good HD video performance including sound quality.
- no focusing issues (to me this is a positive feature. many other cameras have focusing problems including Canon SLR 450D)
- quality case material

cons:
- weak flash
- noisy pictures in dark (although I saw much worse cameras from noise perspective)
- awkward soft buttons on touch screen and bad menu management
- not reliable (see below)
- battery life

After using one year (unfortunately almost 1 week after warranty expired) the camera started to vibrate when it is powered on. It is not posible to stop it and take a picture. From my research, I found out that the the DSC-T20 models have the same design issue but Sony has been fixing them for free of charge. For this model, it seems Sony is not taking any action (at least as of today). So, please be aware of this issue and do your homework before buying this camera.