My personal essential features for a point-n-shoot camera are as follows:

Lens that zooms out to 28mm or wider for portraits in close quarters (i.e. taking picture of you & the wife where you're holding the camera) or catching scenery from up close.

Image Stabilization for getting a couple more stops of light indoors before you have to start using flash or bumping up the ISO.

The biggest screen you can get - everyone appreciates being able to actually see the pictures on the camera.

Keep to 10 MP or less since anything higher than that in such a tiny sensor is just going to introduce more noise and not any more resolution. Again doesn't help with the indoor shots.

So.....

It just so happened I just now went searching and saw that Casio recently announced a camera that meets all these criteria, the EX-Z250.

http://photokina-show.com/0519/casio...xilim-ex-z250/

Not sure when exactly it's going to be out but I'd say that's the move right there. Hell I might buy one myself to replace my older Casio EX-S600 which has served me well but has no IS, doesn't zoom out very far, and has a small screen. It's also been knocked around and dropped many times. h:

Otherwise if you gotta have something right now I'd look at the Canon SD870. It's a bit chunkier than the Casio, gives up a little bit of resolution, and has a 2.7" screen instead of 3.0" but otherwise is quite the solid camera.