New Camera Kodak Z1485

I am getting with the times, and getting a digital point&shoot to go with my antique 35mm Kodak Retina. The Retina has been out of production for 50 years, although it still works just fine.
I started out at Staples, about the only electronicky place up here. I did the usual thing, fingered all the camera's on display, wrote down the models and went home to consult the Internet as to the merits of each one. There was an Olympus FE310 for $118, but all the internet hits bitched about short battery life. There was a Canon A590 IS which everyone on the net liked.
So next day, back to Staples intending to buy the Canon. Sorry, we are out of the Canon and that model is being discontinued. Arggh. So I settled on a more expensive Kodak Z1485 cause it was somewhat larger, offering more camera to wrap my hands around and offering some control of aperture and shutter speed. It could focus very closely, which is handy for photographing model trains.
So, I tried it out, taking a portrait of yours truly to post on Facebook. That worked out. The self timer does work, although it requires a steady finger on the shutter release. It goes like press the self timer button, then press the shutter release to the FIRST click, and then press it all the way home. Feeling that first click is delicate. The battery powered LCD viewfinder is marginally readable in sunlight. You can do it but you have to squint. If you hold the camera vertically (portrait mode) the review mode rotates the image 90 degrees, so it displays right side up with the camera held horizontally. This undocumented feature confused the bejeezus out of me until I figured out what was going on.
The Kodak supplied software to suck the pictures out of the camera onto your computer is fat, it soaked up 600 megabytes of hard drive. It also installs a plump, always resident, driver that eats up cpu time and kernel memory by constantly asking "did he plug the camera in?". Documentation and human interface have the usual computer geek obfustication. You don't download photos from the camera, you click Tools->CameraBrower->Sync&TransferManager. I still don't know what "sync" is about. Transfer does work. It has a "erase the photo's off the camera after transfer" feature which I don't trust enough to use.
The camera does accept AA batteries, but they have to be Lithium AA batteries, not something you find in the average grocery store. It comes with one NON rechargeable Lithium Battery. Rechargeable batteries and the charger are $26 extra off the net. The camera documentation (and a Google search) failed to reveal whether the camera would charge batteries if plugged into a computer. In fact the manual says nothing about battery charging or battery life. I have been unable to find a battery charge indicator anywhere on the camera. So if you care, you oughta have a spare charged battery in your camera bag.
So far, it does take good pictures. Fourteen megapixels and a 4X optical zoom. The autofocus is effective. It has a video mode, which I haven't figured out yet. It won't play video back on a TV.