An excellent beginner camera

I bought this mini on sale for $400 at Best Buy during the Black Friday weekend. This is the first mini camera I have and I feel it is perfect for a beginner--or a novice who is just learning the technology for the first time. My prime motivation for getting this was that I have nothing to remind me of my graduation from college and I regret this very much. So I decided to buy a camera and never not capture important life moments. This camera fits what I was looking for (was not looking for HD recording and all that new stuff). It has a 30 Gig Hard disk that lets you record up to 7 hours of ultra fine quality video (other settings are fine, normal. and economy--the higher the quality the less time but i have found that 7 hours at the highest setting is excellent. I prefer a hard disk over the flash because I don't have to continually buy extra memory cards (This I found out after talking to a really nice tech guy). The audio is preset so you don't have to fidget with the sound and zoom (which are the same button). It is light and easy to carry with/pr without a tripod. It also allows you to take pictures but I find this more complicated compared to digital cameras, as you have to press the capture button once to let the camera focus and then after you get a green light can you press the capture button again to take the picture. Pictures come out blurred when you do not wait for the green light! Also, you have to press the power off button that's really deep on the isde to really power off or else the camera will still be on standby even if the side screen is closed (a red light will blink continuously and you will run out of battery in one hour when it takes that much to charge. Other than what I have mentioned, everything is excellent. The box comes with everything you need: AV cables to TV, USB Cable, and Battery that you have to charge for first use. I use the AV cable the most to connect it to my computer and use Pinnacle Studio to edit my home videos.  The USB cable i find not a use for because the movies transfered through that are really big... hundreds of Megabytes for like 10 minutes of video. Oh, you get the accessories package so you don't have to worry about buying the right equipemnt for your camera.