I just bought a Canon Powershot S10 (I think the S20 is just coming out now)- very compact (I have small kids so basically I was looking for a small camera for snapshots with the capability to do other stuff as well.) - fully featured. The USB thing works great - I just keep the cable attached to the port so I don't have to monkey around with the back of the computer. This camera uses flash cards or, optionally, an IBM 340 MB microdrive which holds the equivalent of 45 rolls of film. There are some really cool things you can do with digital - effects, stitch several pictures together for panoramas etc. And yes, you will need rechargeable batteries - 6 or so. The little video screen eats them up pretty fast. You can turn the video off, but I have found that I don't want to. Enjoy.