Need your advice again. :->

I have a friend who is very giving and knowledgable. Once, I bought my D300, he handed me a lens to try out a Nikon DX VR 18-200mm lens. He says is a very nice and sharp lens. It's been sitting in his closet since he went full frame D700 format.
The deal is, I can try the lens out and if I like it, he will sell it to me at a great price and even take payments! Sounds good to me.
So what about this lens? Anyone know anything about it? I googled it and it seems it has a nice write up. Dead Link Removed Only problem it has and I found out is that it has "Zoom slide" meaning that if the camera is pointing downwards gravity takes hold and the lens slides downwards.
Not a good thing since I tend to photograph things on the ground. Otherwise, it seems to be a fine piece. I would like anyone's thoughts and advice before I commit to the lens.
Thanks
R

In order to make any recommendations I think we need more information. What lenses do you already own? What subjects do you shoot primarily? What do you expect from this lens?

As a very rough rule, zoom lenses with such a large range of focal length do not produce the best image quality. That may or may not be important to you. According to Hogan this lens is better than most of that range.

The best advice is to take advantage of your friend's offer. Take the lens for an extensive trial run and see how it performs for you.

I had this lens for a while, and it is overall a good performer. My oldest daughter now has it and the D90 it was on, and likes it. My take on it is that it is a sharp do-it-all lens. There is some distortion at the wide end of things that can be handled in the lightroom or camera raw lens correction module. When I replaced the camera with the D7000, I got the 16-85 DX zoom, which is overall just a tad sharper. My take on it is that you can't go wrong with the 18-200 if you really need the long zoom range of that lens- it is the full-frame equivalent of a 300mm at the long end. If you don't shoot long focal lengths that much, I think the 16-85 is a better choice. And if you want wide, the 10-24 is superb for DX cameras.

I have this lens, have used it on my D300s and my wife's D80, and it's a great walking around lens since it has such a useful range. No swapping lenses Yes, it will zoom out sometimes if it's pointing close to straight down, and your hand isn't on the zoom ring. It doesn't do it for me if the camera is just pointing down, but rather if I'm walking and it's jostling. I've never found it a problem for myself since I tend to shoot with my hand on the zoom ring anyways. It also focuses pretty close, like 18 inches from the sensor. That review Hogan made is pretty much my experience as far as the quality of the images. Only problem I've found is some vignetting in very bright, blue skies. It's not my favorite lens, but that's because I prefer my 50mm f1.8, which for it's very inexpensive price is a great lens, and perfect for portraits on your DX body. It is a great all around lens though. Naturally there's going to be some quality trade-offs with any zoom lens, but if you're getting a deal on that lens I personally would jump on it.

If you have no lenses at this point, and it is a good deal, I would go for it to get started. It can certainly be a convenient all-around lens capable of "good enough" results if you shoot in good light and only want to deal with one lens. But I would not count on such a lens to do everything I needed, personally. Distortion bothers me, as do slow, big lenses. I don't like carrying a "super zoom" around if I don't need it. I prefer smaller lenses. There is such a huge stable of compatible Nikon lenses for that camera. Thanks to Nikon's lens compatibility, you can get some excellent glass for not very much money, if you can do what you need with manual focus. Even some of the AF fixed-length lenses are very good deals, and smoke the zoom in terms of technical performance. Some examples are the 50mm f/1.8 (medium-long lens on APS-C) or 35mm f/2.0 (similar to a normal lens when used on APS-C).