Screw tape! Seriously — it's flimsy, it degrades, and this winding/rewinding business? Please. Camcorders are thankfully starting to come to their senses and turning away from this archaic medium, leading to lightweight hard-disk cameras like JVC's Everio GZ-MG505. Instead of capturing footage (there's a term that'll perplex people 100 years from now) on MiniDV tapes, the camera records images to a 30-GB hard disk, meaning you can shoot over 10 hours of DVD-quality video before you'll have to offload. Still, hard disks do occasionally fail, so we'd recommend transferring your masterworks to DVD a little more often than that, and you can do it pretty easily with the optional CU-VD10 Share Station burner — just connect the cam via USB port and burn away, no PC required. Weighing in at just over a pound, the flagship Everio is a 3-CCD camcorder, meaning it has separate image sensors for the three primary colors to give you better images than those from cheaper cams with just one sensor for all three. Coming in July for $1,300. — Peter Pachal