If you use the kit lens then you will only be able to use it wide open, however I don't find this to be a problem, because if you use a manual lens and stop down the second lens you can get severe vignetting and it doesn't seem to affect d.o.f very much.

Excellent, but I'm not sure whether they inspire me to try to take better shots or retire from the field!

You could always ask them to install linux http://direct2dell.com/one2one/archive/2007/03/13/7985.aspx

Buying a Dell through their website is fine, as long as you don't want anything out of the ordinary. Some years ago I bought a home desktop PC. I wanted to pay 50% cash and 50% on finance. In the end it took three months to complete the transaction because their system had difficulty in accomodating this, their telephone operators had difficulty in understanding this. In the end I resorted to subterfuge. When Dell were ignoring me, I would email them and b.c.c. m.dell @ dell.com (and variations thereof). Now because M Dell was bcc'd the person I was emailing would have been unaware of the fact. However in each case I got a response within 12 hours, so someone at Dell (I doubt Mike does it himself) has the job of catching these emails and chasing up.

My previous company bought Dell equipment, and again all was usually fine, however on a couple of occasions things went awry and we resorted to the b.c.c. m.dell @ dell.com route and, surprise, surprise, things were swiftly resolved.

Have you tried re-setting the camera? You will have to go into the menu and look for "factory reset" or "Reset to defaults".

...and how much will it cost, then?

It works with Photoshop Elements 5!

Apologies if it has been mentioned elsewhere, but v4 of ACR is now on the Adobe Website http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/cameraraw.html as is v4 of the DNG converter utility. It seems only to add support for the Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ8.

sounds like a c@n@n forum!

I'll second that vote