I broke down and bought the E-420 last night. So far, it’s a sweet little camera. Everything is smaller on it, almost 3/4 scale. The 14-42mm looks like it’s about the size of a standard 50mm. Remember in the 60s and 70s when Olympus was making those small SLRs like the OM series and Pen cameras? I like that they’re going back to that. I haven’t had a chance to play with it that much but here are a few observations:

• The kit lens is not silent like a Wave/USM/HSM motor, but it has the mechanism where the focus ring does not move when focusing, not like the Canon or Nikon 18-55mm lenses. Turns out the manual focus ring is not a mechanical one but electronic. While it turns, it sends a signal to tell the camera to start adjusting focus kind of like a point and shoot.
• The three position autofocus points seems kind of not that useful (I hate when people say “useless.” Is it really?) because they are so close together. You have to use the menu to switch positions.
• The viewfinder eyehole sticks out kind of far for my taste. This is actually driving me nuts right now.
• Does not use standard mini-USB.