Digital camera recommendations

[Jude]

I got paid today (yay). My biggest purchase of this summer is going to be a digital camera. I've been looking at some on Amazon in the 150-300$ range but I really don't know anythin about these things. Any tips, recommendations, ones to avoid/look for, and explanations of what various feature descriptions mean? Or links to where I can get good ones cheap (I'm not going to pay more than 300 dollars for one, HOPEFULLY less, but I want a mid-range one with good picture quality. Video isn't important)

[The Haitian]

Megapixel is the clarity. I have a camera with a 7.1 megapixel and I can take a picture of a bookshelf on the other side of the room and zoom in and be able to ready the spine on every book. Mine is a 3x zoom which isn't that great if you like to zoom in for closeups, but I don't even bother. I just take the picture further away and then zoom in and crop it through paint. (The pictures that it stores on the flash card are about 2.5 MB each so they are huge 3072 x 2304.)

If you want, I can take a picture and upload it to show you how it takes. (Mine is a Nikon Coolpix 7600)
$207.85 on amazon

[andy]

I have the sony DSC-S90, paid 100 dollars for it, its decent for that price, If you want a link to where I got it, I'll hook you up...