YES I forgot to mention that! Our old one (Canon ZR500, do you have something similar?) only has a Firewire output too, so my wife couldn't use it with her laptop at all, another huge drawback! Since I consider myself a Canon guy, I figured I wouldn't go wrong with Canon, so I really didn't look any further than their current lineup. The VIXIA R500 was the right price (on sale for $199!), had the features I wanted (the higher-end models really only add built-in memory and WiFi, which might be handy but don't justify the extra cost to me), and was rated pretty highly on Amazon, so off I went. I'll remember to give an update and/or share some video once I've used it more!