Camera test ride - Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ50

My boss (Philip Storvik) graciously loaned me his new Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ50 this past week-end. This is a 10 megapixel fixed lens camera with a 10x optical lens (35 - 420mm equivalent) and image stabilization. This is a pretty nice camera that would be nice for backpacking or non-photography travel. I don't care for the electronic viewfinder, but the live lcd screen seemed to be bright enough outdoors. I especially like the fact that this camera saves photos in raw format (along with a jpg), but wish you could turn off the in-camera jpg generation. Note: ACDSee Pro could not open this raw format, but Photoshop CS2 did not have any problems. My first impression of the images are that they seem to be a bit "noisy" at ISO 200. The close focus distance (even in AF-macro mode) seemed a bit "long". Here's the specs: http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/specs/Panasonic/panasonic_dmcfz50.asp