Not a very good camera. Spend a little more and get a much better camera.

Author's Rating:

Pros: Cheap. Easy to use. 128 MB SD card included (through special at walmart.com).

Cons: You get what you pay for. Poor picture quality. Camera locks up when switching modes.

The Bottom Line: 
Don't buy this camera. Pictures turn out dark and pixelated. Eats batteries. Spend a few dollars more and get a much better camera.

Author's Review
First off, the picture associated with this camera on epinions.com is not a picture of the Vivitar 3745. For an actual picture of the 3745, go to vivitar.com.
I researched this camera and couldn't find any reviews, but it had all of the options that I was looking for so I figured that for the price, it would be a good deal. (I was wrong.) I purchased this camera on walmart.com. For $229 I got both the Vivitar 3745 (a 3.1 mega pixel camera) and a free 128 MB SD card. Delivery was cheap and fast. (I ordered on a Thursday night and received it the following Tuesday morning. The cost of 2 day shipping was less than $5.)
This was my first digital camera and I was looking for something to supplement my 5-year old automatic Canon 35mm camera. I'm not a photography expert, so I just wanted something that was simple to use and took pictures that would be somewhat comparable to my Canon 35mm. (For the last 4 years I have been paying to have all of my 35mm pictures put on disks when I get them developed. My goal with going to a digital camera was to save money on developing by putting the pictures on a disk myself and only having the best pictures printed.)
Included in the package were digital photo editing software, the camera, a camera case, a lens cap, a wrist strap, a cord to connect the camera to your PC via a USB port, a cord to connect the camera to your TV via a RCA connection, and 4-AA alkaline batteries.
The 128 MB SD Card (which I believe was a walmart.com exclusive deal) shipped separately, but arrived on the same day.
When you first turn on the camera, you have to enter the date and time, which was easy to do, but unfortunately, this had to be done every time that you changed the batteries (and I had to change the batteries often). The menus on the camera were easy to use and I liked the fact that in addition to the picture preview LCD screen on the back of the camera, the top of the camera had a small screen which displayed the image resolution, the number of remaining pictures that could be taken at that resolution, and the remaining battery life. If the indicator was correct, you could take around 140 pictures at the highest quality resolution on a 128 MB card. In addition to taking still photos, the camera also allows you to take video without sound in the Quicktime format (a 128 MB SD card will hold about five and a half minutes worth of video).
I "owned" this camera for a week and took about 150 different still pictures in various settings (inside, outside, and in various lighting) and about 12 different short videos.
All of the still pictures, regardless of the lighting, were dark and pixelated looking. The videos were somewhat pixelated, but they seemed to be of better quality than the still pictures. (I expected a degree of pixelization on the videos. After all, this is a still camera and the ability to shoot video is a nice bonus, but not the real purpose of the camera.)
When my first few pictures came out somewhat pixelated, I thought that maybe I was using the wrong image resolution setting, but that wasn’t the case and no matter which image resolution setting I used, my pictures were dark and pixelated.
The camera’s built in flash didn't seem to make any difference in the picture quality. I took a number of pictures at night in my living room (a room that is around 15 X 20 feet). Regardless of whether the flash was used or not, my pictures were dark and pixelated.
I thought that maybe the pictures would be better once I downloaded them onto my PC. I hooked the camera up to my PC via a USB port. Downloading pictures from the camera to the PC was quick and didn't require any special software (my operating system is Windows ME). But the picture quality only appeared worse on my PC.
The included photo editing software was adequate (very similar to most of the other photo editing software out there), but nothing to get excited about. I tried editing and improving my photos using the included software, Microsoft Picture It, and Kodak Easyshare. No matter which program I used, my pictures were dark and pixelated and nothing seemed to improve them.
Hooking the camera up to my 32-inch TV’s RCA connector in order to view pictures on the TV was easy to accomplish, but something seemed to cause interference and in addition to being dark and pixelated, the pictures when viewed on the TV also looked “fuzzy” and would fade in and out.
The 4-AA alkaline batteries that came with the camera lasted about 20 pictures. I changed to rechargeable Ni-MH batteries and could take about 30 pictures prior to having to change batteries (and thus having to re-enter the date and time with each battery change).
The shutter button was very unresponsive at times. I sometimes had trouble knowing whether or not I had taken a picture and had to stop and use the review function in order to see if I had gotten the shot. When taking video, you use the shutter button to start and stop the video, but sometimes I had to push the button 5 or 6 times before I could get it to start or stop the video. Other times the camera would lock up when switching between video and still picture modes and the only way I could get the camera to work again was to take out the batteries (and then I had to re-enter the date and time).
After a week I had had enough and took the camera back to my local Wal-Mart. I was out the shipping cost (less than $5), but I learned an important lesson about buying a cheap camera (you usually get what you pay for). This time I bought a Kodak 6340 for $279 and so far, I couldn't be happier with it. The sad thing about the Vivitar 3745 is that I really liked the layout of the camera. The functions were very intuitive. Less than a minute after taking it out of the box, I was taking pictures and I quickly figured out the majority of the functions before opening the manual latter that night. Unfortunately, all of the pictures that I took using the Vivitar 3745 weren't very good and nothing I did seemed to improve their quality. I had to sit down and read the instruction manual before I felt comfortable using my new Kodak 6340 (which only took about half an hour to read cover-to-cover). The Kodak doesn't have as many manual settings as the Vivitar, but every picture that I've taken with it so far is excellent and I've already taken about 100 still pictures and a half dozen short videos (with sound) on the original set of batteries. .