A few pointers (from experience) : Don't play the "Megapixel game" : more is not necessarily better. You have to ask yourself what the maximum printed size of your photo's is going to be... A friend of mine owns a 6 Mpix camera and consistently shoots at lower res to cram more photo's on the memory cards (which are still expensive). IMO you can't go wrong in the 3 - 5 Mpix range. Also remember that a megapixel is NOT a quality measurement unit ! More important is the "glass" : the quality of the lens determines the quality of the shot ! Whether you buy a $ 5.000 DSLR or a $ 500 digicam... On www.dpreview.com, you can easily compare the qualities of different lenses. DON'T consider the "digital zoom" when comparing camera's : digital zoom is basically unusable (I always disable it) when hunting for quality photo's. So try to find a decent optical zoom system (that should eliminate some of the competition) Functions : personally, I find video capabilities obsolete (when I want to make a video, I'll buy me a videocamera), but I know that for some users this may be quite important. For me, digital photography is all about learning the various concepts of lighting, white balancing, focus, aperture, etc... so I prefer a camera with lots of manual controls available "on the fly" (as opposed to selecting them through a myriad of menus). That's why I bought myself a Minolta Dimage about 9 months ago. Now I'm saving to get my dream camera : the awesome Canon D60 DSLR...