.... I was more than a little mortified (although perhaps you can only be fully mortified - once, unless you are a cat - rather than a "little" mortified?) after I dropped the X10 when out walking the dog. I sent it back to Fujifilm in early January and in less than a week they were able to provide an estimate for the repair (actually quite a lot cheaper than I had feared it would be) which involved giving it a general service, plus new top plate, bottom plate, exposure compensation dial and lens cap. I was happy that they'd got that far so soon after the Christmas break, but even happier that after I paid by telephone, the camera was repaired the same day, and back in my "safe" hands less than 24 hours later... looking and working like new again. Brilliant!
PS - this little experience persuaded me to buy the leather case for the camera (once I'd tracked one down at a slightly more reasonable price). I have to say I really like it - it's well made and fits nicely, and the magnetic catch means it's quite easy to use the camera with the full case attached, rather than taking half of it off and stuffing it in your pocket. Only issue is that taking the camera out to replace batteries and memory cards is obviously a little more time-consuming but that goes with the territory.
PPS - take a look at the page on raw files here - I've added a few thoughts that might be interesting to some but the short answer is "if you play with the JPEG settings carefully (especially noise reduction) there often isn't an enormous benefit to shooting raw unless the going gets tough".
