I've had this camera for about a year now. The picture quality is amazing, but the operation is maddeningly slow. I wouldn't suggest it for shooting kids. In fact, I just had a baby and bought the Canon S95 to replace it.
If you're fine with waiting a second from when you press a button until something happens, go for it, it's a really good deal. It's worth noting that actual shooting (shutter lag) is not slow at all, it's just menus etc. that are slow.
It does shoot in Raw the only issue I would say it is very slow in low light situation
but for that price it is a steal
Correct about the RAW shooting, but if you have to wait ten seconds for the file to process (even with a fast card), it hardly seems worth it. I shoot only RAW with my SLR, but on this I shot around 10 RAW images before I gave up.