Hi Randy,
I went through the same dilemma a few months ago. My son was approaching the six month mark and my wife suggested that we invest in a camcorder. I won't go into too much detail however I spent many hours on cnet.com and epinions.com. It was driving me crazy! I was close to purchasing a Sony Mini DV unit however a sales person talked me out of it. The Sony models are a little over priced for what you get. To make a long story short, I walked into a local store one day with the wife and kid in tow, saw a Canon Optura 300 on sale for $700 cdn.(regular $1400)and bought it. I wouldn't have spent $1400 for this camcorder but the 50% discount was too good to pass up. I was planning on spending $750 for a Sony so this was twice the unit for about the same price. In summary, this model is very user friendly. As a side note, many sales people had told me to stay away from the DVD-R disc models as the manufacturers haven't quite perfected this format yet. Good luck in your search.
Cheers,
Shaun
