Here is a "buyers guide" kind of link from Amazon which gives some general comments, and then shows current competitors and prices. You can click on any that interest you and get some reader feedback as well. That is where you really pick up the useful information

http://tinyurl.com/56e4dm

Example: the Canon IS5 followed the very successful IS3, and offers more pixels and a hotshoe...but there are some comments about noise at the 8mp level...and a writer laments the race for more pixels, which also begets the noise and reduction algorithms etc.

Dip in here a little and you will be a very informed buyer. Rouss

After almost a month we finally found a store (in a different city) that had both the Panasonic DMCFZ18 and DMCTZ3. We live in a good size city with plenty of stores that sell cameras, but only one of them had the FZ18 and they had no power hooked up to the cameras- they were waiting for an electrician to come in and fix it. Believe it or not 3 weeks later it still wasn't fixed. I'm pretty sure that I could have found an electrician in 3 weeks.
The difference between the Panasonic cameras and the others in the same price range really is amazing. Great color, no shutter lag. They both look like all around great cameras. We've decided to go with the FZ18- only because of the zoom- it's great.