I opted to purchase a Canon A70 after I did some shopping around. I had looked at Pentax Optio S because it was tiny (fits into an Altoids tin!) but in the end I rolled with the Canon because it had a modest amount of manual control and an extra 1.2 million megapixels, too. The other bonus to rolling with the Canon was the fact that it uses compactflash memory cards, which are the cheapest ones available.

My only regret was losing the receipt, since after a month of use the camera's mode switch (which controls whether the camera is in picture-shooting or playback mode) decided to fail. I need to exploit the 1-year warranty now. I still don't regret purchasing the camera, except when I look at the Canon EOS 300D. Then I cry.