Overall, I think this was a very fair review and the way I read it the conclusion was extremely positive--I would think the fact that the resolution matched the vaunted 717s would raise more than a few eyebrows among those who expected little from the "same old lens" and a an supposedly overcrowded ccd. Factoring in the price of this camera only makes it look like a better value.
I was surprised however that Phil didn't really shed light on the "aggressive default in-camera sharpening vs. noise" issue. He admits that the default sharpening is too aggressive and states his preference for a setting of -2. But it appears the noise tests are done with sharpening at 0. I would have liked to see the "noise" test done at different levels of sharpening. The point, as someone mentioned above, is to see how the camera performs at it's optimal settings. And of course if I am comparing across camera's I want to see how they compare at their optimal settings--the mere fact that I can adjust the settings makes the deafult limitations irrelevant. I realize this just adds to the reviewer's time burden, but it seems pretty simple to do I'm disappointed this reveiw didn't clear it up.
As for CA, I guess it's just less of a problem for me in practice. I have yet to attempt to portray aluminum foil in my shots so maybe I just have a different preference in subjects from some of you. But seriously, after taking probably 20,000 pictures with a C3040, c2100 and now the c5050 (all cameras with perhaps above average propensity to show the purple fringing whether it's technically "CA" or "blooming"), I can honestly say that it has yet to ruin a really high quality picture of mine. It does show up in many pictures that are over-exposed or try to capture scenes too high in contrast. But to my eyes, these are pictures that suffer from flaws in composition and or exposure, anyway, and the purple fringe is but a symptom of that. Anyway, if you take a great shot and you get too much for your tastes there are several very easy ways to correct for it. In fact, I often find that pictures with a lot of purple fringing tend to look much better in B&W than in color anyway because of the areas of extreme contrast. Also the amount of frining in a printed picture is much, much less noticeable than the 100% or 2000% screen view.
One last observation. The acid test of any camera's picture quality has to be prints rather than 100% screen enlargements. Many of the imperfections you see at 72 dpi are simply not visible at 300dpi. It is impossible to show print quailty in an online review, but I'd at least like to hear the reviewers opinion of the same size prints of identical scenes from a single printer across camera. My experience using an Epson 1280 is that the 5050 makes excellent prints--I've done up to 11x14, so far. They are very sharp; color is very good and I just haven't seen any p[roblem with noise (especially since much of the "noise", I believe, is in fact, sharpening artifacts which always look worse on screen than in the print because the appearance of oversharpening compensates for the softness induced by the digital printing process).
Anyone who wants to see what good pictures from the 5050 look like in actual use rather than contrived test shots is wlecome to check out mine (alebit in 800x600 size) on pbase:
http://www.pbase.com/jfeinleib/olympus_c5050_samples
In sum, I find it hard to believe that anyone who pays $700-800 for this camera will be disappointed with the quality of pictures it can produce to say nothing of how much a pleasure it is to actually operate.
http://www.pbase.com/jfeinleib
http://www.photosig.com/viewuser.php?id=23754 
