I relied heavily on this site to make my camcorder purchasing decision:
http://www.camcorderinfo.com/ Some of the models they review are different than those available to us Canucks, so bear that in mind.
When we purchased our camera in 2006, we were looking for something on the high-end of the cheap-end if that makes any sense. HD cameras were really expensive and HDD cameras were pretty pricey and somewhat unreliable. We ended up getting a
Panasonic GS180. I'm still relatively happy with it today. MiniDV may be on its way out but at least it's a mature technology with most of the wrinkles all ironed out.
My brother-in-law recently got a JVC Everio HDD camera (60GB, black, not sure the model). I've played around with it a bit and it's pretty slick. Really small, relatively easy to use, good picture quality. My only real beefs with it are the odd menu navigation (you use a touch-sensitive slider on the lcd; I prefer the four-way joystick on the Panasonic cameras) and the PITA you experience trying to get the videos off the camera. My brother-in-law, despite installing the JVC software, has been unable to get the movies off the camera and convert them to a format that can be easily shared with friends and family. I haven't tried it myself but it seems like it's a bit more involved than just plugging in the firewire and capturing the video (as is the case with my camera). Of course, YYMV.
Read reviews, try stuff in the store and then buy online. You can usually get way better deals and better selection than most of the junk futureshop carries. That pretty much applies for anything though...
