Great advice above but I guess I would ask how much are you willing to spend?
After you answer that, rank the points others have made in their posts above in order of importance to yourself.
Third, after you've identified a price range and a list of features that are important to you, THEN find the camera that fits that profile.
One person mentioned above they wanted a camera that was small, light and easily hidden in their bag.
I actually wanted a digital that was larger, had the weight of a heavier single lens reflex film camera, and didn't care if I had to pack it away or not.
Lesson: figure out what's important to YOU and then get into it versus the other way around.
The only other thing I would say is that the quality of the image is pretty important to me, so a higher pixel number - 5.1 in my case - and a long lense (35X420 zoom) was also important.
Good luck. Hope that helps.
Rick C
www.goldentales.ca