i realize this may be a waste of time due to the incredible amount of
crap that appears to be on this newsgroup, but...

I have read that there is a serious dust problem with this camera (I
also read it's no different than any others, but the trend seems to be
there is - or WAS - a problem.

One of the things that concerned me was that a lot of people were
saying there was "factory dust" on the camera i.e. it was really bad
coming from Canon and required immediate cleaning and sometimes a
return. Most of these reports were coming from a few years back, so I
was wondering if this still appears to be the case or if Canon has
made any corrections to the problem?

thanks