Thanks for a nice, practical review of the new Lumix. I found this more information than the giant reviews at, say, dpreview. Here's a couple of the thoughts that occurred to me reading the review:
You mention grabbing the camera from the seat to shoot and not being able to manual focus because the power was off. You mean you actually turn the power off on your DSLRs? I leave my 350D on all the time (except when changing lenses, to lower static electricity) so I don't have to worry about whether it's on or not. Once in standby, it uses no power anyway. It does mean that if I want to check on the numbers before shooting, I have to half-press the shutter release, but for the pictures that will be gone in a moment it's always ready.
I utterly agree with the buffering blocking taking pictures issue. When I was looking around the first time, I found the 350D was the only of its class that didn't seem to have such a problem at all -- maybe I was just testing poorly, but that was one of the deciding factors.
You compare the price by saying that a 350D plus an equivalent lens would cost as much, but the lens you give for the 350D is equivalent to 38-168, not 28-100. A better comparision would be a 17-55 f/2.8 IS USM at $1080 (though that's not L, there's not really an L IS equivalent, but it's a very high-class non-L), which is still only slightly cheaper.
I wonder why the SLRs (this among them) don't seem to consider ISO as important enough to make it easy to see and adjust it. Not at least showing the ISO in the viewfinder seems like a throw-back to film days where ISO couldn't be changed while shooting. In the digital world, it's as changable as the shutter speed or aperture, and should be as accessible. But that's just one of my pet peeves:)
