Recently our Kodak digital camera went wrong. First the battery door fell off. I did a temporary fix on this, but then it kept saying the battery was low, even with new ones. It's only a couple of years old, so it's annoying if it's essentially junk. It's a basic, 2 megapixel model, but still cost around £200 at the time. That's the second camera that's died in the last four or five years. It's an expensive hobby.

So I'm on the search for a new camera. Obviously things have moved on and now 3 or 4 megapixels is the minimum to consider. I'd also prefer an optical zoom and some sort of movie capture with sound would be nice for capturing the kids when we don't have the video camera with us. I've standardised on SD memory as the Palm uses it too. I don't really want to pay over £200 all in in case it doesn't last. Extended warranties may be considered if not too expensive.

The problem is that the choice is enormous. There must be a hundred cameras in our price range. There's the Canon A400, which looks very good for the price. Today I looked at a nice Olympus that has actually been designed to resist dust and moisture (uses XD cards, but I could live with that).

I'll be buying in the next week or so when I get some vouchers from the credit card. I just need to decide what the money goes on.