I had the original Olympus UltraZoom digital, and it was a great camera until it croaked at only 13 months old. The biggest issue I have with the current Olympus cameras is that they use non-standard cards - they use xD instead of SD cards, but I do see that the 590 will also use a micro SD. The xD and micro SD are generally somewhat more expensive than SD or CF cards, and won't work in too many cameras. For me, this makes the camera somewhat less desireable. However, you can't ignore the zoom and 12 MP. It is nice to see that Olympus still uses AA batteries (as does Canon).