In for one, I don’t have a camera, so this should be alright, I guess.
true
Well, that’s why there’s no battery life.
I have a Toshiba 3.0 megpxl and the alkalines are just to briefly power up the camera - not for pics
Use NIHMs or lithiums.
Now what about the autofocus?
haha, you’re damn right!
I have the HP 5.2 MP version and I love it!
Here’s why!
1: It uses standard AA batteries. Which means; go to Fry’s, pick up a 4 pack of 2300mAh NiMH rechargeable AA batteries, and a charger, and you’re all set. When those wear out, you don’t have to choke up $25-$50 for a special battery pack. And in a pinch, throw a few alkaline AA’s in your camera bag and you’re ready for anything.
2: Uses SD cards. Pick up a cheap 1GB SD, or even a 2GB one, and you can take hundreds of pics.
3: Optical zoom.
4: It’s small, but not too tiny.
5: It’ll do video and on a 1GB SD card it’ll do about 80 minutes of it.
6: If you fill up the SD card, take the card out and you can squeeze a few more pics into the onboard memory. Yeah, it’s a pain to get off the camera (well not really) but you know it’s there just in case.
7: Builtin Flash.
Downside: The macro mode leaves much to be desired. It’ll claim not to be able to focus on an item close up, even if you have it on manual. If you want to take pictures of tiny objects this isn’t the camera for you. Try a scanner instead. 
Also if you want to be able to take long exposures, you can’t do more than like 8 seconds or so (I think). Eh. No biggie, but if you’re doing stuff like that you’re going to get a serious camera instead, not a pocket digital camera.
All in all an excellent woot!
My mother has this camera. She hates it almost as much as I do.
No optical viewfinder, only the screen which makes it IMPOSSIBLE to take picture indoors under normal lighting. Refuses to focus on the correct object even when dead center in the frame about 90% of the time. When it does properly focus it takes so long to do so your opportunity to take a picture has long since passed. Flash range is poor, about the same range as a disposable 35mm camera. 6 Megapixels means absolutely nothing when it comes to quality. The CCD is terribly noisy unless you are taking pictures at high noon, blacks tend to be on the purple side. As others have mentioned, even with 2500 mAH batteries it sucks them bone dry in no time. Shutterlag!. Startup Lag!. Just general laggy feeling all around.
Pluses… Um, I guess the fact it mounts itself as a mass storage device under linux automatically is the only upside I see to this unit.
I have used, bought, and sold many digicams in my short lifetime. HP’s, Kodak’s and Samsung are among the absolute worst ones made. Do yourself a favor and buy a Nikon or Canon.
I owned an HP digital camera that was 2.1 megapixels from a couple years ago and the battery life is horrible. I’m not saying every model is the same, but I went from HP to a 6.0 Sony Cybershot and its a dream.
It should accept any capacity SD card. Most cameras come with a 32MB card(speaking of retail, not online specials). Largest SD card I have seen is 2GB. Shooting at 6 megapixels a 2GB SD card would hold about 625 pics.
Not bad for the price.
I got a 735 which looks the same except it’s 3.2 MP instead of 6… so here is my experience with the 735:
- very frequently, it will fail to take a picture correctly, and the aborted picture will show up as an error (“Image format not recognized”…as if I loaded an SVG on there or something)
- these corrupted images cause the camera to choke when uploading picures
- sometimes the camera chokes when it stores images in memory and you have to remove the batteries and restart the whole thing…and of course the last image you took comes out corrupted
- it eats up batteries
- it’s bulky
The 735 is extremely frustrating to use…you might say it’s a piece of crap…so I would strongly recommend against buying the M525. For those with a lot of patience, rechargeable batteries, low standards, and no money, it’s acceptable. It takes decent pictures and videos when it works.
I don’t know what a fracking year is, but they must be really short compared to regular calendar years we are all familiar with because according to http://www.dpreview.com/news/0601/06010406hpm525.asp the camera in this Woot was announced at CES on Wednesday, 4 January 2006. That’s less than one year ago. BTW, I found two other camera sites that confirms this information.
That’s just a regurgitated press release. DPReview didn’t actually review it. That was the first place I checked.
Anyhow, despite all the HP-bashing, they do make some decent cameras. I’m not too familiar with the M525, but their R817 is a great entry-level camera. And for the price of this woot, you really can’t complain too much here people. It may not be anywhere near as good as a Canon SD700 or a Fuji F30 (two of the best pocket digitals IMO–nothing but an SLR remotely compares to the F30 for indoor low-light shots) but it’s certainly much better than whatever camera you have built into your cell phone.
where is the printer for this camera?
That’s funny because I was responding to a guy talking about his four year old camera
I have the slightly older 5 MP HP which is now 4 years old as others have put it. The batteries do run down really fast but it is NOW that old. New it was a great camera, no complaints and it cost $299 when I got it.
This is smaller and better than mine, and would be great for a starter camera
CHEAP, Easy to use, takes batteries that you can get anywhere.
I would WOOT this if I didnt already have 2 other digital cameras.
A HP Photosmart 935 5.3 MegaPix
A Canon SD300 4.1 MegaPix
This is not a review, it’s press release blurbs.
Great ‘Photograph’ parody…so terribly sad that I had the song in my head as I read the description…sad, sad, sad…
I’d purchased 4 HP cameras in the pas for our field people at work. The HP brands go through batteries like oil goes through a goose… 35 pictures a day, and the cameras always ran out of juice on (or about) picture 40 or 41. This was with no flash, daylight conditions.
Had to send two of them back to HP within four months of purche. I finally gave up, and purchased Nikon Coolpix cameras for replacements. No problems since.
I’ll buy their printers, but I’ll stay away from anything else that HP sells…
This is the worst camera ever. I got it as a gift last year and it has never taken a good picture. It’s not even worth getting for free!!!
I bought this camera when it first came out. I think I paid $300 for it at Walmart, but it came with a docking station and a 256MB memory stick. The camera was great for about a year, then the docking station broke. HP replaced it at no charge. Then the camera stopped accepting the memory SIM. It would say that the memory required formatting. We tried another SIM and it didn’t work either, thus pointing to the camera as the culprit. I even went through the diagnostic screens that the camera has. So in closing, this camera rocks when it works, but you don’t know when it will stop working.
OUTSTANDING! This must be the photograph that Joe Elliot is singing about.