I purchased A550 in May-08. Until I had not seen the quality of sony cyber shot, I was more than satisfied from my canon power shot. BUT my satisfaction ended as soon as I saw the picture quality and video quality of ony of my relartive’s cybershot (BASE MODEL). Although my a550 has good picture quality but it lost to sony on following aspects:
(1) Sony has very sharp pictures compared to canon
(2) Sony has very sleek body compared to canon which makes sony easy to use
(3) Sony has very clear and sharp videos whereas canon’s videos are not as sharp and crisp
(4) Videos shot by Sony occupies 1/5th space compared to canon. This is due to differenct video formats used by both companies.
(5) As the canon model which I use has pencil cells, this makes it some what bulky.
On the whole sony beats canon in the category which I own.