The "ink leaked into a screen" effect is exactly what a fractured lcd/tft screen looks like (You should have seen the screen of the laptop one of our service engineers dropped from the top of a large back-hoe loader!). It sounds like the diagnosis of the camera being accidentally crushed may be correct.

I wouldn't call it a fault in the pentax design, I'd call it a feature to keep your picture clear of clutter like a date/time stamp!

These days some picture editing software allows you to place the date/time the picture was taken into a comment and you can display the comment in whitespace or other frame around the picture rather than over the picture, which IMHO looks nicer!

Do you mean you want the date to appear superimposed on the photograph?

Basically it sounds like the shutter speed is quite low; by using a higher ISO the camera is more sensitive to light and will be able to set a higher shutter speed. Try taking a picture in low light attached to a mini-tripod if you have one, or place it on a table and use the 2sec self timer so you don't shake the camera as the shutter is tripped. If the pictures come out OK you may need to brush up on your standing-still-while-shooting technique!

One thing I have noticed with newer digital compact cameras with 6+ mp resoloution is that the built-in modes "cheat" in low light situations and drop down to 4 or 3 or fewer megapixels. You haven't changed the settings to always force it to use the maximum res have you? It's what I did on my Optio WPi, but it does mean I have to watch the ISO setings and shutter speed to make sure they stay within acceptable ranges.

By a strange co-incidence, my other xmas present to me (after the K10D) arrived this morning. It was the Ephotozine book "Guide to Great Photography" http://www.guidetogreatphotography.co.uk/ which includes a vast range of input from ephotozine members, which is probably a superset of the members of this forum. Have a look at that first and make sure you are not re-printing the wheel (to mix metaphors!)

ditto, however with all those contributors I can already hear teams of lawyers starting to prepare their royalty cases!

If you want to try it you don't have to go all the way to China. There are "via ferrata" routes in the Alps http://www.needlesports.com/advice/viaferrata.htm

Zaphod, what I meant by the hometown setting, is that many cameras now allow you to have two different time zones programmed into the camera, a hometown setting which is the default time zone (i.e. where you live) and a world time option which might be a different time zone that you frequently travel to. It makes switching the time on the camera very quick.

I just wondered if you had accidentally got the hometown date/time set to 00.00.01am 1st July 2005, and were setting the correct date/time under the world time option (if that is possible - I'm not sure, just digging around for possible soloutions). then when the camera is switched back on it was defaulting back to the (incorrect) hometown date/time. Does that make sense?

How long have you had the camera? Has the problem been occuring since you got it, or has it just started?

Make sure the date and time is set correctly for your Hometown setting.

I'm not a yorkie, but I was passing through Ilkley t'other week and noticed a photographic shop with a fair bit of Pentax kit in the window. Shop was closed (do they still have "early closing days" in the boondocks?). Sorry, but I cannot now recall the name of it, but Google throws up the name "Annings".