And it's smaller! It is worth looking at the Pentax one, really.

If you are going to use Eclipse fluid on a K10D make sure it is E2 fluid, not standard Eclipse fluid!

I've not yet had to resort to a liquid cleaner for my Ist Ds. The Arctic Butterfly does the trick for me. Not that I need to clean it all that often.

Hotshots - maybe if you posted a couple of photos folks here could offer mor advice?

Jessops amongst others sell it. It's not cheap but is good. If you Google it I'm sure you will find other retailers inthe UK who offer it.
If you go for the Eclipse fluid solution it is important to use E2 fluid not normal Eclipse fluid.

I use an Arctic Butterfly brush from Visible Dust on my ist Ds. It works really well. It is nerve racking the first time you clean the sensor, but really it is easy and you should worry, just make sure the battery is fully charged or use a mains adapter.

What a shame it isn't back for Christmas. I hope you have a reserve camera to capture your daughters first Chritmas.

Pentax still seem faster than Canon, and they communicated with you. When my OH sent his Canon back for repair he was without it for nearly 5 months. It took them a month just to log it into their system, then silence until it arrived out of the blue one day, with the UPS man demanding cash to pay for it, which of course I din't have - don't tend to have a couple of hundred Euro's lying around the house on the off chance. So it went away again and came back a day later when I did have the money.

And the real bummer of it all is that the thing is still not right

The new sensor will be a Pentax/Samsung sensor - Nikon have the rights to the Sony sensor - they can't even use it in their own Alphas.
The camera has already been discussed under the same title earlier, in the same forum

The Bigma does not support HSM, and I think that unless Pentax produce and sell (a lot) more SDM cameras it will not be made with HSM. Many retailers can't be bothered to change the name of the lens for Pentax fitting so lit appears to be an HSM lens.
As I have said before my understanding is that Sigma think the Pentax SDM market is too small to re-engineer the lenses. Maybe future Sigmas will support it but I doubt it.

The EU made it that all EU countries had the same pre-tax price for cars. The result was that prices indeed dropped in the UK, but they went up dramatically in other countries such as the Netherlands and Denmark. Manufacturers had a lower pre-tax price for high tax countries, and a higher one for low tax countries. Now we pay a fortune for cars thanks to the British whingeing. To me it seems reasonable that right hand drive cars are more expensive - the market is considerably smaller after all.

Pentax cameras are also more expensive here, but we get a two year Pentax guarantee on them.

My first Pentax was purchased in the US. The shop phoned Pentax USA who changed the US guarantee for a world wide one with no problem - the sent the guarantee certificate to friends with whom we were staying later it in the holiday. Pentax, unlike Canon, seem pretty good about honouring guarantees from other countries. Canon NL won't repair under guarantee a Canon camera or lens which is a grey import, or bought outside of NL!

Imageshack doesn't allow hotlinking.
I've had alook at it on Imageshcak though.

The horizon doesn't look level to me, and I'd have like a bit more saturation, but otherwise I like it. And with a free lens it's got to be good.