I've thought for a while now that the micro4/3rds system is what the original 4/3rds system should have been all along! The technology has had to catch up to make it worthwhile - the EVF was the first real stumbling block, but that has been improved quite considerably in recent models. The latest Sony 16Mp sensor that Olympus uses at the moment is also much better than the older 12Mp models.
Rather than jumping into the system too early, I'd been saving a few pounds per week ready for when the model came out that I was really interested in. I wasn't sure which one it would be but eventually the E-M5 seemed to tick most of the boxes - Olympus did say that a more 'professional' body was in the pipeline but the E-M5 seemed to be pretty well OK for my purposes.
As a keen bird photographer myself, I was aware that one of the zooms would have to do until something better came along. Again, Olympus are suggesting that something in the 250mm - 350mm range is being planned. Hopefully, it will be at the long end of that range and won't have too large an aperture as that negates one of the main advantages of the system: i.e. size and weight. At the moment, though, the system is not ideal for wildlife photography as one's main camera.
The Olympus menu system is indeed difficult to navigate around until you get used to it. This is not helped by the increasingly common practice of only supplying the detailed instruction manual on the software CD - not so bad if you have a smart phone or some sort of portable computer but even then, you can't beat a printed book that is small enough to slip into a jacket pocket to look up a feature at any time.
The E-M5 has a few function buttons that can be ascribed to frequently-used features - actually I could do with just one more (and the E-M1 does indeed have 3 more, so that should make it even better to configure it to how you want it for the majority of situations). You do have to remember which function you've ascribed to each button, of course, so it's not quite as easy as, say, Canon cameras which have buttons labelled: 'ISO' or 'AF-on' etc!
Eventually, once you've got past the stage of familiarisation and testing, you've got to go out and take the kind of shots that you would have done anyway with your regular system. Only then will you know if it does genuinely perform as well as you'd like it to. Some situations may show up weaknesses, whilst others may prove that a m4/3rds system is actually better at capturing the moment.
You can see in the viewfinder the effects of altering exposure-compensation settings before you take the shot, rather than checking after the shot is taken, which may be useful in some situations. M4/3rds lenses also tend to need less stopping-down compared to larger formats which can help with higher shutter speeds or lower ISO settings - again, it'll take time to see how one's photo sessions pan out to see what the overall impression is.
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