You express your needs very well. The key issue with digital cameras, is the mega-pixel value. The higher the mega-pixel value, the better quality picture you will get for the most part. But, the important determining factor most people use, is whether or not they plan on having prints made and what SIZE. The size of your prints AND their quality is largely dictated by the mega-pixel value. In short, if you only require prints no bigger than wallet-sized or slightly larger, a good 5 mega-pixel camera will suit your needs very well. If you intend to make prints of a size of 8 by 5 and larger, I would recommend a higher megapixel value than 5mp. The reason for this, is that with, let's say, a 3mp camera, and you have 8 by 5 prints made, the prints will come out sort of blurry and lack the crisp & clear details you need. The term for this defusion is pixelation. What that means, is that the lower mp camera cannot "capture" the large amount of detail & crispness that you may want for larger prints. A lower mp camera may take pictures into the camera at a size of 900kilobytes, which does not translate well onto a larger print. Of course I am speaking of generalities here. Many of the folks here in the forum probably learned the hard way by buying a cheaper camera & then regreting it later. The quality of many/most of the pictures here are for the most part excellent! Prices on digital cameras have fallen dramatically in the last few years, so you should be able to obtain a good camera for your needs. Another issue that is sometimes completely overlooked, is what program to use to adjust your pictures to their best appearance AND SIZE. A quality program makes this task a great deal easier. This can be seen by the time your have some super shots in your camera, and then after being reworked, they look really bad. A reasonably good program can be found from several companies. Myself, I have been using Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0. It can be obtained for a reduced price and has filled my needs very well for processing pistures of coins which I take through a stereo microscope! Stunning pix can be obtained with a rather easy learning curve. If you want the Cadillac of photo editors, Adobe Photoshop is one of, if not the best of the many offered. But quality comes with a price, So don't waste money on a secondrate editing program, or you will not realize the results you desire! Another issue that many overlook, is the "size" of the picture when it is taken into the camera. For example, my primary digital camera is a 5.0mp Kodak. The "raw" piture inside the camera is over 12 megabytes! Much too large to email easily for all parties! Unless you have a special reason to distribute the pictures in their original size, it is redundant to a degree. My own formula for resizing pictures out of the camera, is to touch up anything like focus, brightnesss & contrast AND reduce them down to a much more managable size of 400 - 450 kilobytes. The reason for this reduction, is to make them more managable for emailing and storage in your computer. If someone sends you a picture, which do you appreciate the most, one or more that just take a few moments to download into your email at a smaller size like 400kb, OR a piture that has not be reworked at all and takes 10 minutes just to downlaod into your computer...in short, downloading a 12mb picture on a dialup, 56k, computer can take considerable time waiting for it to download. Large pix of 12mp for example usually take up the full screen and sometimes even more. The bottom line for this is that you should rework the original pictures from the camera to obtain the best appearance AND reduce them to a size that are easily managable. I am sure others here can recommend a couple of excellent cameras at your price range and advise you on the minimum mp value you have to buy to maitain your standards of quality. This interaction/cooperation of forum members is invaluable and can save you money! best wishes & good luck! I hope I answered some of your questions. And thank you to all of you who post such beautiful roses! : ) Sincerly, "Smitty"

I have never liked pulling the card in and out compared to hooking my camera up USB, but now am doing such as I was having trouble DL'ing my camera software into my new XP computer. I have had that happen to me too to where I bought a new card etc. After use in my computer, when I turned my camera on after inserting the card, it would show No pictures or something to where I could not shoot until I fiddled around with it. So far, I am having luck as I slowly put it in and out, holding my breath hoping. I also found trouble occurred when thinking I had to use that Safely Remove Hardware from the taskbar which I don't do now. Sorry I can't help you but maybe the Photography forum may have run into that same incident if not solved here? Here is a link that might be useful: Photo forum

Memory cards do not wear out like tapes. But they can fail. And, more typically, they can get lost. It will not hurt your memory card, your camera, your computer, etc., to transfer pictures from the camera to the computer. I would do that anytime I did not want to lose the pictures I took. If that's 33 pictures taken at a birthday party, fine. If that's two pictures of a UFO, fine. Once it's on your computer, find some way to either copy it to another computer, burn a CD or DVD with the picture files, or copy the pictures to the Internet. You don't want to lose your only copy of a picture.

If you transferred the pictures from one to the other, I can only assume that you were able to transfer them onto the computer? Can you now transfer them back? If not, most places can just take the entire memory card and pull pictures from it for printing.