I bought an extra battery for mine which is real handy when traveling. The battery life is real good - several hours of continuous shooting and viewing, even with the lower life battery supplied with the camera. These batteries also interchange with Sony video cameras, so you can get double duty out of them if you own a video camera also.
I have used the camera to take pictures to email to family & friends, Fox & Friends, post on auction sites, send to publications and even just to print out on photo paper. I used the camera on a tripod to take pictures of kids on Santa's lap this past Christmas, printing them on photo paper with an ink jet printer - a terrific success! The quality was not quite 35mm SLR, but it was a whole lot better and faster than a cheap 35mm.
I am now experimenting with the mpeg video mode for our local track team, many events are completed in less than the 1 minute limit in extended mode. We may post these to the students web sites eventually.
All my old 52mm lense accessories fit this camera. The filters, effects lenses & etc. add to the creativity you can unleash with this camera. The ability to instantly check your work by viewing on the screen is impossible with 35mm. Many years ago I considered becoming a professional photographer and back then you had to do a test shot with a Polaroid to check lighting, composition and so on. I believe this camera will take the place of Polaroids in all applications. Don't throw out the old Nikon 35 yet though, for true quality work, you still need film.
This camera also has a whole disk or single frame copy feature that is really nice if you want to give copies of your pictures away in the field. You can also delete unwanted frames to free disk space in the camera. The controls and menus for all these functions are intuitive and straight forward to use.
Exposure control is also easily accomplished with a series of programable features. The shutter speed, apeture, flash and white balance can all be set manually if you don't want to use the automatic mode, which really is adequate for most situations. You will want to read the book first, but once you have the basics down, it is just infinite experimentation from there. You can't make a mistake - just reset and try again - you're not wasting expensive film!
I would recommend getting a wide angle accessory lense; if you are taking pictures of large subjects in tight quarters, (no, I'm not talking about Santa Claus!), sometimes you can't backup far enough. An extra battery, as mentioned above, is also essential if you plan to use it traveling or on all day assignments.
