The good stuff: Its small, about the size of most 35mm p&s cameras. Its not heavy. That means it doesnt spoil the line of a suit too much, would definitely squeeze in a small handbag. It ships with a Lithium Ion battery (what you get in the better laptops keeps the weight down and keeps the camera running for quite a while). 2 mega pixels should be enough for most purposes: it prints well up to A5 and acceptably up to A4. Its pretty intuitive to use, although youll still get some benefit from reading the very clear manual. The flash works well, its not overpowering and flesh tones look natural. USB hook up to Win2K or XP is very easy with the camera appearing as an external flash reader - and reading the images off is quick. 64Mb is enough for 65 images at default compression. This is not the drastic compression Ive seen on some other cameras, think high quality jpeg. The mode dial works nicely (the sunset setting is great but youll need to get it on a tripod, theres a standard mounting thread on the bottom). Despite having a plastic body it feels robust and having carted it around in a variety of pockets I must concede its a pretty rugged camera. Lastly, it starts up quickly and is ready to start shooting in seconds.

Theres a few downsides. The lens provides good detail but has noticeable barrel distortion across the entire zoom range. This is more a may be more a problem for pictures of architecture than people (Probably expected on this kind of camera). It has an output to TV to review your pictures but the quality is pretty bad, but then I guess most people wont use this anyway. The 3x zoom doesnt start particularly wide: the pictures dont look as though they were taken with a wide angle lens. At the telephoto end depth of field isnt enough to separate people from the background.

A couple of pointers, get at least one additional li-ion rechargable battery, useful if you pop in a 64Mb CF card. The Nikon MH-52 recharger unit supplied is fast, just over the hour from flat.

The 775 handles dim lighting conditions very well if you elect not to use its in-built flash (say in a large hall), but, due to the resultant long exposure time ensure the camera is held steady, otherwise expect blurred pics. For a boost, it works well with a higher power hand-held slave flash gun (with a low cost sync adaptor attached to the guns shoe).