I bought an HF100 in September, sent it back, and am entirely more happy with the HV40. Mostly this is because I'm still using a dual core 3 gig computer--AVCHD just laughed at me. And, yes, MiniDV for tape storage is still a huge comfort to me personally. As far as quality of image is concerned, with both cameras hooked to my 50" plasma screen, the HV40 actually seemed better (both were spectacular).

My NLE is Pinnacle Studio 12.1, which handles HDV easily. My impression is that even people with upgraded computers--quads with 6+ ram and good cards--still have AVCHD challenges. Certainly more challenges than MPEG2.

The cameras are very similar (HV40 clumsier in the hand). So Iif anybody has doubts about his NLE or computer specs, I'd suggest searching "AVCHD" in your NLE forum. It can be Beta-world....

Pro: you'll save a lot of time transferring footage. And the camera is absolutely silent and probably more dust resistant etc (no tape drive).

Neither pro nor con: image quality ... I don't think the HF100 is worse than HDV from current gen Canon's and Sony's, but its not strikingly better either.

Perhaps pro or con: the camera is really small!

(I have been using Cineform as an intermediate in recent years, so performance on my NLE is identical to what it was with HDV)