Well I've got one of these too, now. Sadly I wasn't able to buy from Chris@SRS since he didn't have one in stock and I needed it for this weekend - in this case it came from Bristol Cameras for £219 + £10 delivery, and it arrived in 48 hours well-packed. Not up to Chris's extraordinary speed, but perfectly acceptable.

Initial observations:

Quite compact closed up, feels heavier and more substantial than the 75-300, not as heavy as the 80-320, but subjectively feels better built than the latter.

It has quite a long focus throw - 180 degrees from one end to the other, so AF from close up to infinity takes quite a while. If you've already got it in roughly the right place, though, it locks on perfectly well and quickly.

I've only really looked at it at the long end, but early impressions are good. Pixel peeping, it shows a small amount of CA at the edges, as well as a little PF, though nowhere near as much as the Tamron 70-300.

Surprisingly little difference wide open and stopped down to F11, sharpness-wise, which surprised me, so I'll look into that a little more closely. Not at all bad, though.

I'll post some decent pictures when I've taken some that show anything.

It's tons better, and IMO perfectly usable.

I think it's got a chance to bed down, now, while people use it and winnow out all the more minor issues - I'm sure there'll be a bunch of things that come up.

For instance, it would be nice to have a "quote this post" link when replying to a PM.

It's possible to click "quote", and then paste the relevant text in between the tags, but even so...

As far as "finally" is concerned, I think it's a tad early to be using words like that

But I think you guys have done a damn good job today.

I'd like to switch my vote now, given the changes today.

You mean you have time for photography with all this furore going on?

Whatever next? Normality? Surely not...

Which camera, though, squire?

If it's a K10D, or K100D, then Menu | Rec mode | File format | JPEG

Hope this helps... now get back to work

No, I'm not - see my post above with two edits.

The second edit was added after a subsequent post.

AIS, I think it must be time-limited, with a very short limit. It would be nice if we could have:

- no 'edited by' message provided we edit before the next post and
- no time limit if there's no subsequent post, and
- a much longer 'edit allowed' window if there is

'ornery?

It derives from 'ordinary', I believe, so is that an errant apostrophe?

Come on George, we need to keep at least one thing from the 'old forum' days, and linguistic pedantry is one of the most important!!

I'll let you off, if you meant, "'ornery'".

Yep, and it works well in FF2 too.

I use the 'simple skin' over there, which uses the default vBulletin blue.

Also, it shows as 'edited' instantly, rather than after a delay.

This was better on the previous site, since you could edit a post to fix a typo if you were quick, and it wouldn't show.

Only if you edited your post after another post had been added did it say 'edited by etc'.

This was a good compromise - it discouraged the rewriting of history, but not the quick fixing of typos.

Personally I'd prefer to go back to this rule, if possible.

It doesn't appear that you can edit a post after another post has been added.

Edit: I can edit this one, but not one of my earlier ones.

Edit2: Seems I was wrong, I can still edit this one. I guess it's time limited then.