A friend of mine is thinking of buying one of these cameras. She is a school teacher and is buying it for school. Does anyone have a input on this camera?

She is looking into getting one for school - needs to be not too pricey and have some good features;

around 6 mega pixels, atleast 10 x optical zoom
movie mode with sound
XD card compatible
rechargeable batteries
easy to use (for teachers/students with little technology savyness)
Perhaps some manual features (for more arty type uses)

any feedback?

I don't know about the 600 but the SP500 does not have an optical image stabilizer. The risk of getting blurry photos at 10x zoom is high without using a tripod.
Does the camera need to use a XD card? I prefer compact flash or SD card because they are widely used.
There is a review of that camera at http://www.steves-digicams.com/2006_reviews/sp500.html