My wife wants to get her parents a new camera for Christmas. Right now, they've got an ancient Sony Mavica that writes on floppy disks. Almost anything would be a big improvement. The trick is how to get them something that isn't just cheap crap without spending a bundle. This is further complicated by their PC also being quite old and underpowered. It's probably got USB 1.0, but certainly not 2.0. Never mind having a smaller hard drive and so forth.

The cheapest cameras seem to be 4 megapixel cameras, from $130-150 or thereabouts, with a 512MB SD card being reasonably cheap as well (around $50). Reviews are spotty on these cheap cameras, since there are so many of them and they change so fast. Still, what I've found isn't encouraging. For example, consider this review on the $200 Samsung DigiMax U-CA 5 from PC Magazine: With a poor menu structure, small LCD, and noticeable shutter lag, this camera has little to recommend it.

Should we suck it up and buy something in the $250 price range instead? One camera that might be attractive is the Kodak EasyShare V530 ($259). Says PC Magazine: The V530 is inexpensive, very versatile, and easy to use. The excellent menus, blistering speed, and handy extras make it an easy pick for our Editors' Choice. DCResource mostly liked it, but complained about poor battery life. Likewise, at the same price point, is the much loved Canon PowerShot SD400. With a 512MB memory card, we're talking about $300, and then we'd have to buy some cheap USB card adapter as well.

Thoughts?

I don't know much about the low end, but the mid range is a good place to be IMO. You can go back one generation and find a Canon Powershot S60 for around $250. I like their S line a lot. My girlfriend has the S40 and my parents the S70. Both are excellent.

Only having USB 1 isn't going to be that much of a problem really unless you end up buying them a DSLR and they use it in raw mode. The PowerShot should come with a USB cable and you plug the camera directly in and access the card that way.

Could you check if Picasa can talk to your camera directly? In theory, you don't need the Canon software at all...

I agree with Dignan. Get them a low end Canon like the SD200, or A400

EDIT: I also never use the Canon software with my SD300 on Windows XP. It just shows up in My Computer.

I just bought a powershot A610, excellent and flexible camera for the money, in my opinion. Best thing is no noticeable shutterlag under good circumstances, even in dark environments the auto-focus is pretty quick.

To get pictures out of the camera I had to use the Canon software, as the camera doesn't show up as a removeable drive as my ols camera does (Benq) or MP3 players and USB sticks.

I tried, but Picasa doesn't see the camera, good old Irfanview will allow you to select the Canon Twain driver and to use that to get the images in your PC though.

As it so happens, I'm on Win 2kpro on an old, tired machine (450MHz PII, 192MB Ram) but still everything is sufficiently stable and quick not to be a real pain.