Not familiar with some of the newer models, but some suggestions ... 640 by 480 res is what I run and it works great for web use w/o the file sizes getting too big. If you're going to be mainly printing pix, I would go at least 1024 by 768 (or whatever it is thereabouts) or even higher ...

The sony's are great in respect to their durability ... mine gets damp and banged around almost every day. And the fact that you can store on floppy on the low to medium res models is really nice ... if you're going to go with a high res camer (2 megapixels or something) ... go with the USB connector so you can put software in a couple of machines and plug in any of them at any time.