i really want this camera but ive bought like 3 really bad cameras already in scared to get before i know for sure its a really good camera. I don't know what bad cameras you have had in the past but I can give some suggestions..... Personally I really like this camera and it is on my list as a generally in my purse type of camera. Battery life is pretty standard for sony and that is generally about 2 hours on a full charge. The problem with this is that the time is decreased by the things you do with the camera( such as using the screen, zooming, flash..etc). So generally and this is with any camera you will get about 1 to an 1.5 of full charge time and it will take about 2 hours to recharge... So I would recommend a back up battery. Now in the first of the W-series ( before I stopped selling cameras and before they became so small) the pictures had a tendency to come out blurry. I would recommend that you go to a store that has a working demo ( like best buy, some circuit cities) and actually take some shots on the fly to make sure that this problem has been corrected. But overall sony has very good cameras... I have a DSC-V1, my sister has a DSC-W5, and my mother has a CD mavica 350. So I highly recommend these cameras.... but you also might want to look at the canon elf series ( they don't come in cool colors though) Depends on how much you use it. It's basically a good camera. You'll probably get 1 hour constant use before you have to recharge and the recharge life is good. | 