Rating: 
Summary: Flexible, smart camera
Review: My Critical Customer Requirements (CCRs)that the camera met were
1) Commonly available power source - the camera uses AA batteries and recharbale AAs last the entire time taken to fill up a 256M card
2) Small - the camera (without any additional lenses) can be carried in a coat pocket/purse
3) Fast - this camera allows me to respond very quickly to a photo opportunity and is smart enough to track the action and maintain focus
4) Price - I was able to get it for $321 from the Circuit City site
5) "Cool Value" - the large screen and plenty of manual control features, as well as additional lense options make this a great indoors/outdoors camera
Some CCRs that the camera did NOT meet were
1) Continous zoom will not work - if I used the 2.6x lense extension kit, at the lower zooms, the field of vision is reduced by upto 50% (the picture you take seems to be taken through a tube). The extension lense work well when the zoom is at it maximum
2) Polarizing filters utility limited - the filters do not work with the extented zoom lenses. However they work well with the standard 3x optical zoom.
3) Extension kit - the extension kit causes some reduction in the filed of view, especially when using the built in flash.
Overall, I am delighted with the camera, hence the 4 stars.
Rating: 
Summary: Doesn't live up to its 5MP potential
Review: Only one review site mentions this problem (...) but now a lot of users are starting to see it. This camera's noise filtering causes pictures to look 'soft' or in my interpretation - slightly out of focus.In outdoor scenery shots it isn't very noticeable - the 5MP is able to give you a lot of detail especially in the area of the picture that is not your main subject (background trees, roofs, etc). However in portraits, or pictures of pets, the problem is VERY apparent. Going from a 1MP to a 2MP camera, the 2MP camera "wow'd" me. Going to this 5.1MP camera, I look at the pictures and say "eh?". I've tried what other people have suggested - set camera to manual or programmed mode, turned up sharpness, turned down contrast, set autofocus to center only - yet still pets, portrait
shots are smooth. Facial features are ever so slightly blurred - detail is lost in the hair, contrast around the nose and eyes. It's like looking at a flat/matted picture! Do I think I got a bad one? No. There have been a few other owners on some of the digital camera discussion forums that at first said "No way, this camera is great!" only to come back later and say "Wait, I spoke too soon, there is an issue". Then there is the poor flash capabilities - not very powerful. Yes, a lot of compact digital cameras suffer from this but this camera seems especially bad. There's a user that took a bunch of indoor photos at their son's birthday part and every one was blurry - not one was printable! The camera is physically gorgeous. The LCD is HUGE and very nice and clear! The camera is very responsive, fast, WELL built, and a nice size, but the pictures don't live up to the "Carl Zeiss, 5.1MP" advertising! Don't be fooled by reviews that take pictures of posters and resolution charts - this camera does great with those items. Take a look at their portrait shots of live people and zoom in on the facial features. Compare that with another camera and you'll see the difference. Again, far away shots of scenery looks great. It's when you're doing closeup work of detailed items where the problem shows up. My W1 is going back this week. I'll bet in a year, Sony will address these problems and THAT camera will be fantastic.
Rating:
Summary: Not a good camera for the price
Review: Pros:
Features, large LCD display, 5MP, compact, AA batteries
Cons:
Blurry pictures! (Isn't picture quality the whole point of a camera?)
I received this camera as a gift. It was supposed to replace my old slow digital camera (made by HP). I really wanted to like this camera because it was a gift and who wants to deal with a return? Out of the box, I could not take a clear photo with the Sony. I decided that it must be "user error" and read the manual and watched the software tutorial. My images still were blurry. I decided to sit the camera on a table and try to take a picture that way - the center was in focus, but the edges of the picture were not. After playing with it for awhile it's about 50/50 whether or not I'm going to get a somewhat clear picture - I don't want to trust my memories to a 50% chance of a crystal clear picture! If this camera were only 100$, I wouldn't complain and I would live with it, but it retails for over 300$ and is 5MP, the image SHOULD be sharp. By digital STILL camera- I think Sony means both the object being photographed and the photographer need to be perfectly still.
If you're only going to be taking still pictures a tripod and photo cropping software would help with the blurry spots. As far as a camera to take pictures of the family - my recommedation is to pass on this one!
I gave this camera 2 stars because of the nice features on the camera (the attempt by Sony was there). I admit, I could have just gotten a defective camera, I don't want to take the risk though.
Rating: 
Summary: Finally my search is over for an excellent digital camera!
Review: This is my first digital camera (hard to believe, uh?). I spent along time researching which digital camera to buy, looked at a number of different brands and models, Cannon, Casio, Olympus and Sony, read alot of reviews (thanks to those of you who take time to post your feedback, it really helps), checked out various websites (dcresource.com is the best!), etc. Up until purchasing the Sony DSCW1, I had not come across a digital camera that had the right combination of features and quality (e.g. pictures and build) at a competitive price.
After using the camera for about 2 weeks here are DSCW1's pluses: 2.5" LCD screen (really nice!); 5 megapixel quality; ability to use AA batteries; takes very good photos (still experimenting what settings work best in certain conditions); fast restart time between taking pictures; on-screen menus are fairly intuitive; no sliding door that covers lens; 3x optical zoom; recording live video is limited to size of memory stick; a host of manual features (that I will probably never learn to take advantage of), etc. Downloading pictures on to the computer is easy and the quality of the pictures (e.g. color, lighting, sharpness, detail, etc.) are excellent...have not encountered too much red eye (turning on the red eye function helps.)
So far I haven't run into any issues with using the camera, although a few of the pictures I've taken have come out blurry due to movement when I took them...you have to have a steady hand when using any digital camera.
I purchased the DSCW1 on Amazon for $319 around 2 weeks before Christmas (usually the best time of the year to purchase digital cameras on Amazon)...the best part was that Sony was offering a $50 rebate, so the camera cost me about $270. I also picked up the DSCW1 soft carrying case (a must have) and a SanDisk 256mb memory stick (which was about half the price of Sony's memory stick). And of course with Amazon there's no sales tax and shipping. Hope that my feedback helps you make an informed purchase decision!
Rating:
Summary: Great 5MP Value
Review: This our third digital camera. Our other cameras are from Canon and Nikon. I was leaning toward the new Canon S60 because we love our other Canon and they both would take the same CompactFlash memory cards. This camera was going to be mine and I wanted 5MP so I could do some cropping of pictures and still keep up the quality when printing in 8 X 10 format. The Canon S60 kept being delayed, so I started looking at alternatives. The DSCW1 seems designed to compete with the Canon S60. Both are 5 MP, both are compact, both have manual modes which allow you to be creative with your pictures. The Sony pulled ahead with its larger LCD display and its ability to use standard AA batteries. The Canon relies on a propriatory lithium-ion rechargable battery. The Sony comes with AA rechargables, but should they go dead at an inopportune moment, you can pop in any AA batteries to keep you going. I bought the Sony and have had it for almost a month. The batteries don't seem to last quite as long as our Canon, but I picked up a couple of spare rechargables for less than $10 and just alternate them in the charger. The DSCW1 downloads using USB2 so even though each picture is larger than 2MB each, they download FAST. The picture quality has been great. Indoor low light shots have a bit more blur than I would like, but they didn't come out at all with either of our other cameras. Colors are crisp and true and prints from the pictures (on a Canon i470 printer) are excellent. One word about the included software. Yuck. It is useful for downloading and for doing a quick view of what you took, but beyond that it is very limited. Overall, I am very happy with my Sony DSCW1.
Rating: 
Summary: Overall good but Night mode is a problem
Review: Using this camera since six months. Initially seemed good for all my requirements but since I purchased a lexar 256 MB memory stick, it gives me problem in night mode photography. I own a sony vaio and when I shoot a photo in night mode, everything looks fine but as soon as I insert the STICK in my laptop, and copy the photos in suddenly my computer core dumps. Probably the memory corruption problem. If I dont use night mode everything is fine.
All other features are fine and working good.
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