Coolpix P6000 a Non-Starter

Continuing my quest for the perfect small, digital, photographer's camera, I was reading through the detailed specs of the Coolpix P6000 when I came across mention that the RAW format is something called “NRW”. "NRW" I says? What’s wrong with good old NEF that’s served me so well? And why is there an asterisk next to every mention of this NRW? Scrolling down, I find this:

"COOLPIX Picture Control NRW (RAW) files can only be processed in-camera. NRW (RAW) files are compatible for use in-camera, with ViewNX (Windows version only) or with WIC based applications. Capture NX, Capture NX2 and NEF files are not compatible with NRW (RAW) images."

Can’t be! I says. Nikon in bed with Microsoft? I’m a Mac user (switched about a year ago) and a regular user of OS X photo apps, primarily Lightroom and iPhoto. I jumped ship to Mac to get away from Microsoft and Vista. Looking at Microsoft's information about WIC (I thought it was a federal program for Women, Infants and Children) wasn’t very revealing but it didn’t give me a warm supportive feeling: “… extensible framework, blah blah, image codec’s, blah blah…”

So I jump over to the Adobe Lightroom forum and confirmed my fears through a post from Thomas Knoll who says that WIC is Windows only and unusable in Lightroom. Finally, I check in with Thom Hogan (Nikon guru and columnist) and find he’s recommending to “skip the P6000”.

Sound Advice.