I am currently researching both myself at the moment and will probably end up getting one or the other but here’s what i’ve found so far.

The zi8 is a great pocket camera because unlike its predecessors and the flips, it has image stabilizing and a mic jack. The sound quality is not great from the youtube test videos i’ve seen but the image quality is very good. For protability this is great too although the xacti isn’t exactly cumbersome. I also believe that the zi8 takes stills at reasonable quality.

The xacti on the other hand has a weird shape (i can’t get around the pistol grip but oh well) However, because it’s more camcorder than just point and shoot, it has a few more features. I beileve the camera, whilst not on the high end of megapixels also features a flash so that would be good for night time scenes. Some of the youtube footage i’ve seen of the xacti is really good. As good if not better than the zi8 and the shound quality is brill… the build quality of the xacti does feel cheap when i tried it in jacobs over the weekend but it’s a budget camera and I wouldn’t expect it to feel amazingly solid.

Right now, I am more inclined to buy the Xacti :)
I hope you’re happy with the purchase you make whichever you choose to go for!

Fahad x

kodak zi8 is the best It is very easy to use. The controls and menus are straight-forward. I was able to download the videos to YouTube as well as my Mac. iMovie took it right in and was able to play the video back.