Sony has won me back

I have a Sony Mavica FD88 digital camera. I chose this camera for two reasons. One, it uses floppies to record the image. At the time I purchased it, 1.3 megapixels was pretty good and everyone was using JPEG. The convenience of the floppy was a big plus.

The second reason I chose the FD88 was because of its long zoom lens. It has an 8x optical zoom with a 2x digital zoom, giving an effective 16x total zoom. Don't ask me what this equates to in standard focal lengths, I just know I can get pretty close-up on stuff far away.

As megapixels increased, zoom lengths decreased. Take a look around and you'll see that 90% of the digital cameras out there have no more than a 3x zoom. Not very useful unless you're relatively close to your subject.

Since the end-of-life-cycle for the Sony Mavica FD97, I haven't been impressed with any digital camera. The FD97 only intrigued me because of the dual media (memory stick or floppy) and the long zoom. I was taking more pictures and wanted better quality - swapping floppies just doesn't cut it anymore. I have all but abandoned my FD88, sad to say. It just doesn't fit my needs anymore.

Enter the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-F828. I first heard about it at MIE, the Mavica Information Exchange. When I went to check it out at Steve's Digicams, I started pining for one right away. It's an 8-megapixel, 7x Carl Zeiss-lensed, dual media (Memory Stick or Compact Flash!), lotsa-buttons, picture taking machine! [Grunt! Grunt! Grunt! Grunt!] It's code name is Dark Angel, for crying out loud.

I WANT ONE!!!

Two problems:
1) Not available until November
2) $1,200.00 MSRP

I guess I'll have to wait for a good deal on eBay...