I ordered a Nikon Coolpix L5. 7.2 MP. Image stabilizer, Integrated memory, 5X optical zoom, AA batts. $195 shipped. Thanks for all your suggestions!

Hmmmmm. I'm going to look into that one. I figure, after reading your posts for several months and recently hearing you're going to research thoroughly before buying, you probably did considerable homework. Thank YOU!

I have a Kodak point-and-shoot and a Nikon dSLR. I won't give advice on brands and models. Previous posts gave great advice on features. I'd guess you can't go too wrong with any of the major brands. Higher resolution is nice, but the file sizes get big too. If you get high enough zoom it is handy, but be ready to bring along a tripod to prevent blurry pics (good idea anyway).

The Kodak gives beautiful color and as mentioned can use AA batteries (I use lithiums), which is a real plus when out and about, though I use the Kodak rechargable batteries with the docking station around home. If I were to do it all over again I wouldn't buy the docking station, but would instead use a separate NiMH charger.

At first I used the Kodak software, but no longer.

I strongly recommend use of Adobe Photoshop Elements software for uploading, organizing, and editing pics. It is FANTASTIC software, especially for the price.

These days I only use a card reader for uploading pics to the PC. When I insert a card, the Adobe software recognizes that is has been inserted and downloads the pictures. I use an option that creates a new folder for each date a pic was taken. Then I use Elements' tagging capability to associate tags with different kinds of pictures (family, vacations, outings, scouts, school, special events, etc...) so it is VERY easy to find those pics later on.

Next, selected pics are uploaded to my Smugmug.com photo site using a "share" feature built right into Elements in cooperation with Smugmug (and a few other photo sites). I started using Smugmug to share pictures with parents of Scouts and school-mates when it became too much of a pain to e-mail them or burn them onto a disk.

Finally, there is the issue of backing up pics. DON'T FORGET TO BACKUP YOUR PICS!!! I use Elements' backup feature to do this, and it works pretty well. At first I used CD's. Then I used DVD's. Now I have enough pics that I need to buy a portable hard drive to speed up the process.

If you have another $50-$75 to spend you might look at my 2nd choice: the Canon A710 IS. It has everything the Nikon has plus a traditional viewfinder if that's your thing. Just another suggestion. Good luck!

Thanks for the kind words, but you might want to rethink them. I just found out that the camera I ordered was an import model, meaning that all of the onscreen stuff is in Japanese! Needless to say I canceled the order.

Well, if we're going to import, Japan is one of the countries I have little problem importing from. I think most of their stuff is well-made. That said, I wouldn;t want to have to decipher Japanese to get the camera working!

I just ordered the non-import version for 7$ more. Dodged a bullet there!

The canon sd series is nice and the one I have used for years.

I don't think you will get image stabilization for under $200, but I could be wrong.

If you are just going to take snapshots, don't worry too much about how many megapixels you get. People tend to fixate on that and believe that it guarantees better quality photos, but for 4x6 snapshots, a 3 or 4 megapixel camera will be fine.

I'd suggest perusing cnet.com. They review alot of digital gear including cameras.

Whatever camera you get, remember to factor in the cost of the storage media. Most digitals come with really low capacity SD or complact flash storage media of only 16 MB or so. You will want to upgrade that to at least 512 MB so you can fit all of your pictures on it. (And the more megapixels, the more memory you will chew up. I buy 2GB memory cards - but I take ALOT of pics.)

Also, be sure to set up some backup system or burning your pics to CDs or DVDs or something. If you keep it all on your computer and your computer's hard drive fails - your pictures are gone.

Good luck.