I bought one for my parents and I have the older s1000 which is almost exactly the same. They are a pretty good camera. If you look in my fire thread and the sunset/sunrise thread you can see photos I have taken with it. Its no slr but its a lot smaller and lighter and you can still take some pretty damn good shots. Has a lot more controls than a standard point shoot. My only gripe is that you can't open the shutter for any longer than 8 seconds, but then that may not be an issue depending on what sort of photos you want to take. For the price of it though you can't beat it.
Four commodores and counting.