I just did a quick Google search (it's dead easy!) and found that like many of the P series, apart from full auto mode, the P500 has a number of the features which are on a DSLR such as PASM and scene modes.
When I buy a new camera (or just about any other tech gear), I spend all the time between placing the order and it arriving on YouTube and by the time it arrives, I am quite familiar with it - so if there isn't anybody on here who has one and as it's not a particularly recent model, I'd say that YouTube is probably a good place to look.