a) I am well aware of that. In fact I did a series of shots, from the highest to the lowest resolution and all of them are not pretty, shall we say.
b) Same for this one. The flash did go on, but it wasn't full power, so the background light (two lamps) seemed to do at least part of the job. I can't attribute the poor quality to lack of light, in one word.
c) Yes, Dr. Frued would be quite happy, (if he'd ever gotten this quotation).

d) this is Camedia 5000. It has manual controls, and I do think that in such simple setting even the automatic ones should work okay. I tried a few of the auto settings and they all did fairly poorly.

Conclusion: I think the camera is just plain bad. I still have to check the landsapes I did today, but I have little hope for them.

(I am not sure what would be better, though, in 300 USD price range.)