I thought I would post a short article illustrating the difference between using a hand-held camcorder with and without the benefit of a mechanical stabilzer.  The footage below shows the same camera used for the same scene with and without the use of a stabilizer. 

I also added a anti-shake filter to the footage taken without the mechanical stabilizer to show the effect of editing tools to smooth out video.  In this case I used Video Studio Editor by Ulead (now owned by Corel) to edit the video and a Steadicam JR as the mechanical stabilizer.