I have to put a vote in for the Canon S30. My girlfriend just got the S40, and it's an absolutely wonderful camera. Extremely well designed and quite compact for a 4MP camera. It's basically the same as my G2, only more compact. I'm guessing the S30 is just the 3MP version of that. I also prefer the type II compact flash memory as my medium of choice. It offers the greatest memory sizes (with microdrives), at cheaper prices than, say, memory sticks.

Also, I'm assuming you've checked out dpreview.com. Don't buy a digital camera without going there.

Oh, and a woman in my office bought a Minolta digital camera once. She returned it pretty quickly, though.