Thie si the first Digital SLR I have ever bought and the decision was almost made for me in advance of my going to the camera show with money in hand the day of the purchase.

I had shot with a friends E-1 (pro model) and I loved the feel of the camera and the ease of use. I then decided I was going to get myself the pro-sumer version of his camera, as in my mind, I did not need all the pro features that his camera had, which at the time was the Evolt E-300.

I went to the show and low and behold they were releasing the Evolt E-500 for only $100 more than I had planned on spending originally. So I made the deals I needed on teh accessories to bring the package I bought into my price range.

Package purchased:

Olympus Evolt E-500 body
Olympus / Zuiko 14 - 45 DSLR lens
Olympus / Zuiko 40 - 150 DSLR lens
Spare battery
2 GIG CF card
Card reader
Lowepro camera bag
and a "stay the hell away from my camera" Olympus EF-100 point and shoot for the wife =)

Likes: The camera is incredibly easy to use especially for someone just getting into the DSLR world from 35 mm SLR.

Fully automatic features are great for the times when you just don't feel like, or in my case, are too drunk at your cousins wedding, to make the necessary adjustments on each shot.

Auto focus is fast and clean but it has a tendancy to be a bit finiky if theres something in the foreground...ie Chain link fence, water spray.

I have found that I generally shoot in Shutter speed priority and leave the WB and F-Stop up to the camera as it ends up 90% of the time at the settings I was going to set it for anyway.

Full manual mode is a bit tricky with this body as it takes quite a bit of fiddling to get all the settings where you want them and by that time your subject has either fallen asleep(kids) flown away (birds) or punched you out (paparazzi =P )

Dislikes: After purchasing the camera and finding out what it is I like to shoot (mostly sports photography and kids) I found that the sport mode is limited and not as fast as I would like. (5 shots over 3 seconds in jpeg and 4 shots in RAW mode.)

The Four Thirds mount is an excellent stable platform but at the moment it is limited for lens selection. Sigma has announced the release of 5 new lenses on this mount but as of yet there are no release dates for when they will be on the retail shelves.

Overall I really like my camera despite the few features that are not up to par with my shooting style, and as lens selection improves I am sure there will be more lenses in all price ranges.