Sushi and compact camera musings
Raw fish: om nom nom!
I have had my Canon S90 for nearly a year! Quite hard to believe - in fact Canon has already announced an update is due out soon (S95). Apparently the rear dial doesn't turn freely anymore on the S95 but I haven't actually found that the loose one on the S90 has been the problem many feared it might be. I like that they've added extra holes for a proper neck strap though - that seems like it could be useful.
If there was one thing that would make me want to upgrade, it would be the ability to attach a dedicated optical finder. I know Canon would rather have me buy the G11 for that but those cameras are simply too big once you've tried the S90 (not to mention the lens is a stop slower!)
I would imagine such a device using a proprietary clip instead of the usual flash shoe to keep the size down; perhaps with an extra frame marked for 50mm FoV. It doesn't need to be super-accurate, although large and bright would be very desirable. For bonus points, the finder could incorporate a focus indicator LED and illuminated frame lines that switch as you zoom the lens - I'm sure many people would pay good money for this.
I often find that I am holding my camera up to my eye, zoomed all the way out and pre-focused, just trying to eyeball the correct framing. It works surprisingly well! Some enterprising users have already hacked (well, glued) finders onto the S90 but a first party solution would be far more elegant. Mike Johnston recently likened these cameras to the original Leica; I think a proper finder would really cement the argument.
Lightroom tells me that my catalogue only has about 750 shots from the S90. It's not much but I have some travels coming up so that number should go up soon. More importantly, I have a very large number of keepers - about 150 are marked 3+ stars - and most of these are in difficult low-light situations where most compacts would struggle to deliver much in the way of usable pictures. These are 150 shots I would not have made with my DSLR because it was sitting at home!
On a related note, I managed to drop mine a short distance onto some gravel. Luckily it escaped with nothing but a mark or two on the lens ring paint - easily sorted with some black permanent marker 
The build quality (while not up to Leica M standards) is also more than adequate!
Shot info: f/2.2, 6.85mm (one step from full wide), ISO 1600, CR2 converted through Lightroom 3.