As for that used Sony someone mentioned, honestly you can NOT go lower than 2 megapixels if you want a decent camera

Not at all true. I will take a 1.5MP camera with manual focus, manual aperture, manual white balance, etc any day over a 3MP point and shoot for "artistic" shots. The extra features allow someone who knows what their doing to take the picture they want rather than the picture the camera wants to take. If you are talking about taking snaps of your kids playing football that is a whole different story, but I thought the original poster would be more interested in the other features. The cheapest camera I have been able to find with the same types of features as that three year old sony is the Nikon D1 which is a lot more expensive and probably not an option for anyone who thinks $500 is too much to spend on a camera.

-Mike