Whats your price range? Canon Rebel XT is probably my favorite out there, but its about $1100. If you want to stay at about $450 for for the Canon PowerShot SD500. If you want to go lower, the Canon SD400 is a good choice too. As you can tell, I am a big Canon fan, you can;t go wrong with them on the digital camera side, stay away from them for camcorders though.
SD500 review:
http://reviews.designtechnica.com/review2824.html