So far it seems like Sylar gets the powers of others by eating their brains. But unlike Peter he keeps the powers.
Sylar is trying to become perfect by absorbing as many powers as possible- and he seems to have a good number of them already. The first obviously being an extreme form of Telekinesis (capable of creating razor sharp knife like effects -- or perhaps even monofilimant edge blade for cutting at close range and able to easily break things and toss them - but so far nothing extremely heavy), he also seems to have super strength or enhanced strength from his telekinesis or even BOTH. Super speed seems likely (could be a weaker time stopping ability - that seems unlikely though because eating brains would be even faster- since it takes less than a minute for him to cut their head open) - and then theres the super tough- he doesnt have any regeneration abilities but he obviously either has an un-natural toughness or has total mastery of his Telekinetic powers (since he fell the same distance as Peter and walked away- but he was limping - so he got hurt but not hardly as much as he would have).
There is just so much we dont know about Sylar-- other than his full name is Paul E. Sylar and he was born on June 11th 1962
My favorite characters are Hiro - of course - Peter (hes just so cool) - Mat the police guy - and Isacc the painter...
I dont really like Claire- shes kinda annoying but shes getting more interesting and seems to be improving as an actor too -- and I really dont like Mohinder Suresh - he might get better-- i liked him at the end of episode 9 but hes been a pain before that...
That list is pretty cool-- its got a bunch of names that we havent heard before-- but all you can see is like 20 or so names...