if you can, look for online coupons and buy from the dell.com website. last week they had 10% off all cameras plus you could add a $30 off coupon on top of that. stay with a 3-5.0 megapixel camera with at least a 3x optical zoom. most of those cameras use secure digital or compact flash cards that are cheaper than the sony memory sticks and the xD picture cards that fuji and olympus uses. i used to sell digital cameras and i work for dell now...canons are good for the price. olympus has better lenses. sony has better tech support. hope this helps.