Tony this is going to sound off base but I have a Minolta a Nikon and I have a Kodak M893IS that just works the best of all of them.
The Kodak is super easy to use and it takes great pics with ease of use.
It I am sure has been superseded by another model as it is about a year old.
This camera only cost 140.00. My wife and one of my daughters have even cheaper Kodak cameras that take great pics are easy to use and download .
My buddy JD just spent 400.00 for a Nikon and it is a little smaller than this camera but does not take as good a picture. This Kodak has great battery life and I have also used it to take videos and it works OK for that also.
I will probably get a lot of flack for recommending the Kodak but it is cheap, takes good pics, is easy to use and it has not broken or done anything bad at all.
I will not buy another 300.00-400.00 digital camera when I can get something that works well for cheap.
It takes 8.3 MP but I have it set at 6 megapixels as I can down load straight to the forum without any editing. It is so user friendly.