All,

I'm the lucky owner of GL2, but I'd like to make my wife a gift buying
another one, simple, hopefully cheap but convenient and relatively good
camcorder, because she doesn't want even to touch this semi-pro one. I
found a few simple ones in the nearest store, like:

JVC GRD 372 US (for 280 USD)
Panasonic PVGS36 (for 300 USD)

and some others. I know, I saw similar threads here couples years ago about
second alternative camcorder for those who's alredy having something more
serious. What are the current models to take a closer look? For sure it
should be DV, DV-IN is not important, photo as well What kind of photo we
can talk having 1.3 MPx. In my mind this second one should be robust, give
acceptable stability and quality, should not require extensive service every
n months, etc. Just comparing these two models I noticed that Panasonic has
a little bit better picture stability on the higher zooms, but it has a very
poor, from my point of view of course, menu and settings are far from
convenience. The button like shoot and stop/kill/break/menu, etc. are places
so close that even having hands it's easy to miss and break the whole
process down to a great frustration.

Screen oriented menu like Sony are not good for those who's living in AZ,
the Sun is very bright and I'd prefer to push a couple of real buttons than
recall where all settings should be on the screen.

Is anybody in this newsgroup is still tracking the latest DV models up to
300 USD, some statistics, usability, service, and other parameters?

Thanks,
Dmitri