I pretty much agree with Raven's criteria, although in an upper end camera an EVF can be even better than an optical viewfinder, especially if you use add on lenses, filters etc.
A lot of it depends upon what you want to do with the camera. Different models and brands have different strengths and weaknesses.
If you just want to take "snapshots" of people and landscapes and share them via computer, almost any 1.8MP up will do: My old 1.8 MP Olympus 600 still takes great quality pictures.
If you want to do Macros (closeups)you will want another kind of camera. (Nikon Coolpix, even the old ones are great for this., and for snapshots in general.)
If you want to do flashlight beamshots, to get any comparative accuracy you will need one with FULL manual control, which is mostly only found on the upper end of the price spectrum.
If you want to do photos in the dim / no light, a Sony 707 or 717 can't be beat.
For "digital film", personally I prefer the Compact flash media, followed by Smart Media: they are best "price wise" and found much more easily and widely than any of the others.
And I prefer a camera that uses AA cells to one that uses a proprietary battery; again, you can get them anywhwere, and share them with your small flashlights ;-)
Get a card-reader for whatever "digital film" type you use (unless you get one that copies directly on floppies or mini-CDs like the Mavicas use)- It will save you hours and headaches that hooking your camera directly to your computer will cause. You can get just about any format reader for less than $60 at Walmart, and the last two (that read both CF and SM) I bought were on clearance for under $20.00
After three months of agonizing and study, Today I finally decided to get a Minolta Dimage 7i to replace my Nikon 950 as my primary camera- I know this is a little higher price level than you were considering, but I chose it because the focal length of the zoom lens (28 - 200 mm equivalent) will let me do just about everything I need to do without having to mess with wide angle and telephoto lens adapters.
Plus it uses AA batteries, Compact flash cards and does well (if not excellently) in all types of shooting; Good from macro to landscape to moderate telephoto, decent color rendition, decent dim light focusing, full manual control etc.
Other cameras in its price range do certain things much better than the Minolta, but none of them are as good at such a wide range of things.
The only real negative is its flash system: It requires a "proprietary" and somewhat overpriced external flash. and since it uses a pre-flash, it won't work with the cheap slave flashes I already have.
If you realy want to study the capabilities of a wide variety of cameras "in the real world", I highly recommend you go to
www.photosig.com. You can search for photos by specific camera type, and see how they perform in the hands of people ranging from professionals to absolute novices all over the world.
Sign up and you can view more photos, do critiques and ask for advice through the forums there: It is kind of like CPF but for photos instead of flashlights. Lots more "eye candy" there though
(notwithstanding Sasha & Daughters recent thread)
Oh, and if you do go there to search for photos by camera types, be sure to be thourough- the same camera can be listed under several different listings due to mis-spellings and more or less complete model names etc.