is AVCHD today better than AVCHD of yesteryears?

Yes. The most recent Canon HG10 has the best picture quality of any AVCHD camcorder and compares favorably to many HDV camcorders.

Thank you Ken!

PS: how many minutes of XP+ recording can fit to the HG10 HDD?

Dave, I believe it can record about 5 1/2 hours at the highest quality setting for HD.

Wow! That's good for my entire month's travel! And I assume I can do simple editing (cut parts of the footage) using on-board navigation right?

Dave, I'm not sure about that since I haven't actually used the cam. You might want to try Canon's website and see if you can get more info there.

Every time you hit the record button the HG10 creates a new file. You can easily delete a file on the camera but you cannot edit parts of a file. So from a practical standpoint you can get rid of clips you don't want but you have to eliminate the entire clip from hitting start button to hitting the stop button.