You get what you pay for

Im in a rush so forgive my bad spelling and grammar.
After recently purchasing this camera Ive had a chance to put it through some grueling tasks and overall I feel its held up pretty well.
A bit about my self. I'm a full time video editor by trade and enjoy photography as a hobby. I primarily work on Avid systems but occasionally edit on FCP systems as well.
I bought this camera for one reason only. Its size. I needed a small video camera that had decent image quality and a good sounding mic. For a camera being able to record 1080i video, surround sound audio and fit in my pants pocket, I was sold.
The first job I put it through was a family BBQ. I recorded a little over an hours worth of footage. The camera was powered on and off for over 3 hours that day as everyone wanted to play with it. On the same charge I played back the hour long footage when I got home. The battery life so far has been impressive.
The bbq get together was primarily out side but some activities took place inside as well. During the day light hours it recorded beautifully both outside and in. I used the auto settings the whole time and switched between 1080i and the sd format. It did a great job on maintaining an excellent picture uniformly throughout the day up until dusk. The night footage with real low light outside however came out real grainy. But on the other hand recording indoors at night with room lighting up wasn't to bad.
The audio was another benefit I found on this camera. It sounds great. Unfortunately if you want to play back the 5.1 from your camera on a surround sound system you'll need the HDMI-HDMImini cable which sony of course does not give.
The next camera usage I did with it was on hiking trip up in the Adirondacks. This is where this camera really shined. Not only did I find it ridiculously easy to carry (in my jean pants pocket) Its UI was easy enough to navigate quickly through. I was able to get it out of my pocket and start recoding in secs which came in handy when I saw a bunch of wild Turkeys off in the distance. When I viewed the footage from the hike at home on my 46" HD tv it looked outstanding.
Now unfortunately for the one big problem of this camera. The AVCHD codec is useless for editors like me. Barely anything supports it. Sony gives you a program that lets you upload it to your PC but you cant really do anything with it. Ive heard that FCP can use it but only on newer Intel based macs. Avid to this day has no support for it yet, but I hope this will change soon. Its becoming more and more popular so maybe that should be a sign for sony to get off there butts and make us a converter for it already.