Oh for the love of god, Canon.  TWENTY-FIVE separate consumer camcorder models?  Coupled with a website that lets you compare — hold your breath for the awesome here — a whopping three models at a time?

Lordy.  It’s like looking at Apple’s product line circa 1988:  “Do I want the Centris 610, the Centris 650, the Performa 455, the Performa 457, the Peforma 503, the Quadra 700 or the Quadra 900?”  Only actually worse.

No wonder Flip/Cisco swallowed the consumer video market whole.

(A friend with a hell of a lot more patience than I possess actually dived in and realized that most of the different model numbers actually correspond to the amount of built-in storage: there are actually just five camcorder bodies being sold here.  Models with three-digit numbers are the ones that are bring-your-own storage only, and hence the ones that sane people will buy.  I assert that any unpaid web design intern on the planet could have figured out a simpler way to convey this information.)