I love my A95 like I did my a40 when I first got that, But I should think
that the Sony will be just as good and I would doubt you could go wrong with
either.

clem --

Well, I am a little biased, my first digital camera was an A40 and I bought
an A95 as soon as they came out and am very happy with it. Supposedly the
Sony's weakness is noisy indoor pictures but it does have the advantage of
being very compact and it delivers overall good picture quality. I looked at
a number of the small and thin type cameras but to me the many advantages of
a more regular sized camera were compelling, a big plus is that a camera
like the A95 uses AA batteries, pick up a charger and 8 AA NiMH rechargeable
and you are good to go all day or more for very little money. The A95 also
uses CF card memory which tends to be cheaper than other types. Both the
Sony and the Canon are very easy to use for a beginner, just set on Auto and
click the button but the Canon has many more user adjustable modes and is
far more flexible if you want to expand your skills, I love the Canon and am
using it as a very enjoyable stepping stone on my path to getting a decent
SLR one of these days but for now the A95 is simply great. The Sony has a
better movie mode but you need to buy a not-cheap special Memory Stick Pro
DUO card for full movie quality with the Sony, the Canon takes okay little
movies but it is not the A95's strong suit. The Sony will run you an average
of a 100.00 more than the A95 and memory and replacement batteries will also
cost more but it is a nifty extremely compact camera that would be great for
someone that wants to take a camera most anywhere.

I love the Canon Software, once the software is installed all you need do is
plug your camera into the PC and turn it on in Play mode, the software
automatically loads and asks you what to do, it creates folders for each day
you use the camera. To me it is so wonderful that from the day I got my
first digital camera I have a photo record of my life on my PC sorted by
year, month and day. I imagine most digi-cams come with similar software.

I was probably the worlds worst film photographer, the type that bought
disposables to take on vacation, a decent digital cam changed all that,
well, I am still a lousy photographer but with a 512MB memory card and all
the capabilities of Digital, anyone is bound to get at least a few memorable
shots. ;-) Welcome to the world of digital photography, it is great fun.

Couple of reviews:
http://www.dcresource.com/reviews/sony/dsc_t33-review/

http://www.dcresource.com/reviews/canon/powershot_a95-review/

Sample shot of mine taken with A95 native 2592x1944 resolution:

http://home.comcast.net/~luckylobo/IMG_0425.JPG

Fun with Photoshop CS. 3 images combined and a bit of tweaking:

http://home.comcast.net/~christsi/dusksit.psd.jpg

Warning! Big file sizes almost seven hundred K for one and a MB for the
other.

One thing I would highly recommend for a new digi-cam user is Adobe Elements
3, a great tool and lots of fun, 1/6th the price of PhotoShop CS but does
most of the same things you would want for digital camera use with a nice,
easy to learn interface and a great beginner mode.