| Back when I got mine, canon's camcorders stunk, and I guess they still aren't that great.
If your picture loses sharpness when you have anti-shake on, that means your CCD is not higher resolution than ntsc (often, they are still even lower), and it has to do a digital zoom to make room for the motion. Though the 1 megapixel is a joke for still shots in mine, that's why I got it, so it does not have to sacrifice quality. Of course now they can finally make optical image stabilization cheaply instead of only featuring it on the pro camcorders.
Oh yeah: your best defense against vibration and shaking is weight.
That's one place where my 2000-era camcorder plus its extended battery certainly have an advantage over today's pocket recorders. No one said you can't strap some lead to it though. | 
