A few things that I discovered during the few years I owned various digital cams:
-the advertised resolution (i.e 5MP) is _not_ the true resolution. Shooting at 2MP with a 5MP camera will produce a sharper image and you won't loose any details. dpreview.com does a pretty good analysis of true resolutions.
-battery life is a very important thing to consider. AA vs proprietary solutions doesn't reallly matter as long as it lasts!
-the high speed cards are useless in most actual affordable cams, as those don't write as fast as the card can support. Your only benefit will be when transferring the pics to your computer using an high speed usb2 reader, given that you think saving a few minutes is worth the extra $
Other things to look for:
-noise at low and high ISOs, specially in blue skies.
-responsiveness (power on, shooting/recording)
-accessibility of useful funcs (changing white balance, iso..)
-'speed' of the lens (ability to use a big aperture -small f number- when zooming)
-chromatic aberrations a.k.a purple fringing, usually appearing in high contrast situations
-distortion at wide angle/full zoom
-electronic viewfinder vs optical; the first give you a lot of useful info and is more accurately representing what you'll be shooting. the later has an enormous speed advantage (EVFs are almost unusable for action shots).
After my deprecated Olympus C2000Z (2MP, zoom 3x), my wife chose the Nikon CP5700 (5MP, EVF, zoom 8x + 1.5x tele converter): very powerful zoom and macro capabilities, but what a battery sucker.. and the powerpack is really expensive (given that it's just a piece of plastic).
I went for the Canon G3, IMO the best all-round shooting camera (small, super long lasting battery, good quality, responsive). Not perfect, but getting closer
G'd luck in finding your future digital camera!
-nyt