Hey, Thomas:

I shot this footage in 720, then edited (including VERY minor color correction) in Sony Vegas Pro 8.0c.

The battery seems to last a good long time for me; I recall shooting up to 2 hours of video on a single charge. However, I can't quite recall right now what the stated battery life is.

I'm having a blast with the Webbie; it's great for quick/discreet captures, and could even be used for a (mostly M.O.S.) short. There are only a couple of drawbacks to this camera, so far as I can tell:

1) When you zoom in/out during a capture, the microphone (which is crappity, as is to be expected) picks up the grinding of the little mechanism in the camera-guts.

2) White balance and focus are sometimes all over the place, especially for night shots. I don't mind this so much -- in fact, I kind of dig the randomness of it -- but it seems to drive a lot of my friends batty.

All-in-all, I suggest picking one up. I prefer the design to that of the Flip, and even though incidental costs (proprietary Sony memory stick) set the cost a little above what they claim on their Web site, I think it's a fair deal for your money.

I'm using it for "Behind the Scenes" shoots on larger projects, little Web videos, quick discreet captures, and short interviews -- that's what the sucker was built for, and that's what the sucker does well.

Any of that help at all?

As far as 720 v. 1080, I can't tell TOO much of a difference between the two on the Webbie. I've switched over to 1080 for the hell of it, but I'm not seeing an astronomical change in quality/reliability either way.

I had no problem editing the MP4 in Vegas. As far as FCP goes, I'm looking around at forums and see a lot of problems handling MP4 (which is kind of ironic, right?). They're all recommending pulling the clip into MpegStreamclip and converting from there.

Have an awesome time on your backpacking trip!