"so it might even look like you're holding a speed camera"

Of course, it might even look like you're holding a pistol. Since this looks like a pistol much more than a chair leg looks like a shotgun, I'd be careful in case some busybody on a bus feels like calling SO19.

A 10x optical zoom is the same strength as binoculars. My Panasonic TZ3 still camera has this feature although it uses part of the zoom range to take wide shots.

This looks like a nice bit of kit. However you will probably get tazered for using it just because it's a video camera, let alone that it looks a bit like a gun.

Ok, so for just a tad more you can move up to a 120GB Sony HDR-SR12 or a Canon HF100. I'd love to see you do a shootout with those against this camera.

Oh, and then there's the Red Scarlet due out in early 2009. That's the one I'm saving my wad for. It's a big wad though at close to $3,000 USD but if you check out the specs, the Scarlet should do to the camcorder market what the iPod did for the MP3 player market.... that is, reinvent the blessed thing.