Digital Camera

I'll outline everything I take with me on the trip- especially the essentials like how many pairs of socks (15.5, i'm thinking) and then as I travel what things I wish I brought, or had gotten instead.

Anyways, I don't necessarily need a new camera. I have a 3 mp camera I bought from my sister (canon sd200), and while I have had no complaints with it (minus difficulties switching it into 'take picture' mode)- and I've always felt it was the perfect digital camera for university. I bought it off my sister for relatively cheap (~ $150 if i remember correctly), it took good pictures, had high storage capacity (with sd card slot), didn't come with that ridiculously slow/annoying digital camera software, and was somewhat rugged. I also felt, due to its low cost, being an older model, that if it were to somehow break, it wouldn't be the end of the world as i knew it.

But, using it now, I'm starting to think that if i'm gonna spend a ton of money traveling around, it might make more sense to invest in a camera that takes higher quality images. My current camera does not have a high "iso" which allows you to take sharp images of moving things and some other new features are 'face recognition' software, faster shot times, higher quality (3.2 - 8+ MP), etc.

So here are a few. I'm pretty impressed with the quality (or so it seems) of these cameras for their price (under $300)

http://reviews.cnet.com/digital-cameras/canon-powershot-sd1100-is/4505-6501_7-32826178.html?tag=prod.txt.4

the latest (?) Canon offering. I might decide to just go with another Canon. They seemed to be the first digital camera's to "get it" with respect to ease of use, small size, excellent battery life, sd card slots etc. But not sure if they're still the "best". You may wonder why I chose to show the link of the blue one, given it comes in 5 colors. I thought it looked pretty. Yes, I said it.

http://reviews.cnet.com/digital-cameras/canon-powershot-sd1000-digital/4505-6501_7-32314638.html?tag=prod.txt.1

According to cnet (pretty good reviews of all things digital), the sd1000 is superior to the sd1100 with everything except for optical image stabilization. what that exactly is, i'm not sure. And- it doesn't come in blue, uh oh.

http://reviews.cnet.com/digital-cameras/canon-powershot-sd870-is/4864-6501_7-32471274.html?messageID=2502693&tag=rb_shell;rb_content;contentMain;contentBody;userOpinions

Best reviewed Canon camera. No normal viewfinder- but I never used that thing anyways. Supposedly takes "great" shots. I think as of now, this is the favorite, followed by the other 2. Please let me know if you have any advice on other cameras to look at.

http://reviews.cnet.com/digital-cameras/panasonic-lumix-dmc-tz5/4505-6501_7-32848644.html

Panasonic. Don't know much about Panasonic products, but it got a good review, and the user opinions were very high on it (highest I could fine of any cnet reviewed camera)

I checked out the Olympus, Nikon and but none of them got great reviews. And I think Sony makes some good products- but, I hate, hate how they create their own sd drives that are incompatible with others. If Sony's removable storage devices were superior to SD, in capacity, speeds etc, okay great. But when they do it just to pad their profits, and force their customers to buy other products that only they sell- I dont want to support that.