Rating  - Great for the price
I did a lot of research before I settled on this camera. I was prepared to spend a fair amount of money on a better model, but I came to the conclusion that it was a better idea to spend less money and wait a couple of years for the HD technology to come down in price and the hard drive storage format to become more established. So this was, in my opinion, the best mixture of quality and price. There are certainly cheaper models out there but beware. There are three major bugaboos camcorders have to face: internal noise, image stabalization, and low lighting conditions. You can expect cheaper machines not to excell in these and to pay dearly for those that do. Canon's real selling point is its optics, but like most lower-end models, they don't "shine" in low light. They put external mike jacks only on their chapest models so they can sell to schools (the education market likes low prices and external mikes). Personally, I have a pocket digital recorder with a lavalier mike and I edit in a separate digital soundtrack to get around the noise problem, but not everyone wants to do that. Canon's image stabalization seems improved from the previous model that I've had, although while 35X zoom seems impressive, I've not yet tested it to see what the vibration reduction is like at the etxreme end. My biggest problem is the low lighting, so I bought a portable utility light at a home improvement store for ten bucks to help with that.
The reality is that even though you don't care to spend a couple hundred bucks every year on new ccamcorders, you should consider this a disposable camera. It costs almost as much to buy a new model as to fix them. I bought this to replace a ZR85. Which leads me to another point- if you have the option, you might consider an extended warantee. The earlier generations of camcorders seem to have had a habit of blowing out.
You will want to buy an extended life battery as well- the battery that this model came with was good for only a short while.
I wouldn't bother much with still photography- camcorders don't have great snapshot capabilities just as camera's don't generally have good video capabilities. It's tempting to try to kill two birds with one stone, but none of the models I've seen do both eaqually well. Even my cheapo point and shoot digital camera takes better pictures (but not nearly as good video). Also, copying video to the SDram card is a quick and easy way to slap a short video clip on your website or email it to friends, but you will get a compressed file with significantly poorer quality than the miniDV tape. On a PC you can use Windows Movie Maker (free download if you don't already have it) but it only saves in WMV format. To burn in DVD format you will need authoring software (that's another review, but I use Adobe premiere elements).
MiniDV is on its way out, but will probably still be around for a while. It has great quality- much better than a DVD, although you can certainly create DVDs from a miniDV tape. As far as storage goes, the tapes are pretty cheap- 13 gigs or so for a couple of bucks is pretty good. In the future though I think the hard drives are going to be the next big thing.
Copying your tapes to a DVD via a Mac is a breeze with imovie and iDVD (no, I don't work for Mac) although I generally do my editing on a PC. It is a bit of a pain (less so when you finally get the hang of it) but I don't have regular access to a Mac.
This is a really great starter camera if you are just getting into digital video and a real easy, convient, point and shoot workhorse. That being said, it is sophistocated enough that you can grow into it. My guess is that by the time you grow out of it the prices for more advanced technology will have come down and this camera will have reached the end of its lifespan anyway. I found mine brand new online for 260 bucks, and I got what I paid for and then some.
Rating - Bad Motor Noise
We purchased a Canon Elura 70 2-years ago but unfortunately the zoom, still photo and tape loader broke recently. We wanted to stick with Canon for our next camera because it is a good brand so we got the Canon ZR850. Instantly the motor noise stood out. It wasn't subtle it was a high pitch whining noise that gets recorded when video tapping. At first I thought I could live with it but when I compared the recorded video from both the Elura70 and the ZR850 there was a big difference. Think about filming on vacation and wanting to capture the crash of the waves and chirping birds - not with the ZR850. Don't go there. We are returning the ZR850 and probably going to get the Panasonic Palmcorder MiniDV 3.1MP.
Rating  - Great buy
The professional reviews sold me on this camera, the experience of buying it through Amazon exceeded my expectations. The camera arrived ahead of schedule and the camera performs great - even after I dropped it once.
Rating  - Motor noise is a HUGE problem!
I used to have an Canon Elura 70, which was an excellent camcorder but the firewire transfer didn't work so I decided to replace it with the Elura 100 only to find that Canon had discontinued the Elura line. I really wanted an Elura for the improved video quality over the low-end zr models. So as a compromise I purchased the ZR 850 which has a 1MP CCD, not a good as the Elura (1.3MP) but better than the other ZR's (.640MP). The video quality wasn't bad but the motor noise was so loud I couldn't believe it. I returned the first one but the replacement was just as bad. This isn't a minor hum in the background I'm talking about, its a full-on whine! I also found the ZR camera to be difficult to handle with my small-ish hands and the video stabilisation was a bit disappointing. Luckily I could return both cameras without incurring a restocking fee and found a reconditioned Elura 100 that is much more satisfactory. Its a mystery to me how Canon can produce two markedly different cameras (quality wise) in the same price range and opt to phase out the better one.
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