I figured this is as good of a place as any to ask about this... My wife and I are planning on taking some of my birthday money and our Christmas money to buy a camcorder. We don't need something that fancy, and am trying to stay under $500. I've looked into the different formats available...miniDV, Digital8, DVD-RW, Hard Drive, and Flash/memory card. I think I've ruled out DVD-RW and Digital8. I like the idea of not having a tape, so I'm pretty much ruling out miniDV, too...which leaves hard drive and flash. Of all of the formats, which does everyone think is best? If this helps, I would like to edit videos on my computer, and burn them to DVD. I also want something that will make it easy to upload videos to YouTube and to blogs (I'm going to video journal our next vacation, and may upload them to a blog). We will use it to video tape social gatherings, vacations, and our future children (and current nephews).