Canon SX170 IS, My new camera

Since elderly Kodak ZX1485 was getting flaky after some 5 years of service, I bought a new, jazzier Canon point-n-shoot.  Fixed zoom lens, LCD view finder, built it flash.  Comes with a non standard lithium battery and a battery charger. Won't run off AA cells like the Kodak would.  Needs you to purchase a memory card.  Comes in black, the proper color for a camera IMHO.  I'm down on pink for cameras, hand tools, electric trains, or handguns.
   Memory card is 16 Gig, and will fit into the memory card slots on my Compaq SR1750 NX desktop.  A "card present" LED even lights up.  But Windows XP does not recognize the card.  Same slot, had recognized the lesser 2 Gig memory card from the Kodak.  Some web surfing discovered the existence of a Microsoft patch to handle memory cards greater than 2 gig.  Said patch came with a lot of  weasel words about not guaranteed, and you ought to wait for the next service pack, and some other stuff that says, "We Microsoft, made this patch 'cause they demanded it of us, but we don't like it, we don't trust it, proceed at your own risk."
   So, I went back to Staples  to buy a USB cable for the Canon.  They had one in stock!  It was a Staples branded Mini USB cable.  Even cooler, the cable came in a clever blister pack that left the "Mini USB" connector open to touch, and even plug into the camera, just to make sure it really fit. Cute packaging design.  To my surprise, Canon had used an industry standard connector on the camera.  Plugged 'er in, and Windows recognized the camera and good old Picassa photography program was able to down load photos from the Canon.  Cool.
   After uploading the photos to my desktop and labeling them I noticed that the camera date was off by seven months. I had set the date during the get-acquainted-and-power-up session.  I had to refer to the camera manual to get back to the date setting menu.  Somewhere in the camera manual it mentioned that there was a separate tiny battery to hold the date while the main battery was out of the camera for recharging.   And it takes four hours for the date holding battery to charge off the main battery.  Result, I had set the date before the date holder battery had charged, so the date didn't stick.