Major Blur/Sharpness problems with Pentax Optio 50 .. need help!

[DLL_4ever]

I just baught my first digital camera yesterday. Earlier today, I went around my house and my neighbourhood taking pictures. After I had opened them up on the computer, all of them were very unsharp, and some of them were pretty blurred. Also, there seems to be weird colored pixels all over the photos. Im very new with this digitial camera stuff, so please go easy when trying to explain things to me. thanks.

I have uploaded a few sample pictures to show you my problem.
http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y19...1/IMGP0061.jpg
http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y19...1/IMGP0051.jpg
http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y19...1/IMGP0022.jpg
http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y19...1/IMGP0011.jpg

Thanks in Advance!

[another view]

Hi and welcome. I was wondering if in the first three if the lens just needed a good cleaning, but kind of ruled that out with the last one because the chair on the right is sharp. Still, take a look at the front of the lens. If there are finger prints or a smudge on it you could wipe them off with a microfiber cloth, the kind they sell at camera stores. But I'm thinking it's more than that - like maybe you got a bad camera and it needs to be exchanged. They should be pretty sharp "right out of the box" so to speak from a camera like this.

The "wierd colored pixels" are digital noise, kind of an equivalent to grain in film. I noticed it most in the shot of the pool table which makes sense - it'll happen with higher ISO speeds pretty quickly especially from compact cameras. If it's on an auto mode that automatically selects the ISO speed, then it probably picked a fairly high one (like 400?) due to the low light level, as opposed to outside on a sunny day for example. Your camera probably has a noise reduction mode you might want to use in a situation like this.