Blinkin' flip. Now I'm having an anxiety attack. I really wish I'd read the huge number of posts about how unreliable this thing is before I ordered it (it arrived this afternoon).
The ONLY thing that made me buy it was the self-delusion that if it costs £100, it must be a totally fantastic bit of kit. But there's no way I'm keeping it after reading all this - I don't think I'll even unpack it. Thanks for all the warnings.
I don't really like the look of all the alternative meccano-type gadgets, so for the time being I reckon I'll do without and see how manual release (!) works, or even use the self-timer set to 2secs. Seems to me that the shutter-lag on the 4500 requires users to anticipate the best shot, so I'll just have to anticipate a bit more than most...
it's a real annoyance, since I've just returned a BARGAIN Canon G3 to the shop because of bad vignetting; the Canon is a far better general purpose camera, much cheaper, and as Paul points out above it comes with a FREE infra-red remote control.
Thanks again for all the advice. I reckon these threads should be put in a much more mainstream forum - when I was embarking on this spending-frenzy I never for a moment thought that the thing I'd have to do the most research about would be the bleedin' cable-release!
Al