Has anyone used any of the Gateway digital cameas?

Saw an advertisement for a DC-T50 unit which is a 5 megapixel unit with a 3x optical & 4x digital zoom that sells for $300.

Please advise!

The NUMBER ONE thing to look for in any camera, be it digital or film, is the quality of the lens. Remember, in photography, the lens is everything.

A camera with 2 megapixels and a fantastic lens will generally give you better pictures than a camera with 4 or 5 megapixels and a crappy lens. The 5 megapixel camera will give you a bigger image, however. Of course, if you try to blow the 2 megapixel image up to match it, you'll run into some graininess.

The same is basically true of binoculars. It's been said that you can see distant details far better with an excellent 7x binocular than you can with a mediocre 10x.

Most of major camera companies use excellent lenses. Fuji uses Fujinon lenses, which are considered first-rate. Nikon, Olympus, Minolta and Pentax also use extremely good lenses. I've heard that some of the Sonys use Leica lenses, which are "Rolls Royce". Last year I recall reading that even the new family of Kodaks used outstanding lenses, and in fact, Consumer Reports rated the Kodak as a Best Buy, if I recall.

All of these cameras feature a "zoom" feature which allows you close in on your subject. There are two types of zooms, OPTICAL zooms, in which the lens actually lengthens like a telescope or Pinocchio's nose, and DIGITAL zooms, where the camera's internal computer blows the image up in basically the same way as PhotoShop.

Ignore the digital zoom. It's a gimmick. Like I said, you can do the same thing on PhotoShop. The only thing that matters is the optical zoom -- getting back to lens quality again. The better lenses will distort the picture less as you zoom them in or out.

As a final note, I'd stay with the big camera names like Nikon, Fuji, Kodak, Pentax, Olympus, etc. because they're made by companies that specialize in photography, which is a world unto itself.