I was just chatting with a buddy and mentioned my recent camera purchase to him, the Canon PowerShot SD870IS. I hope I made him just a little jealous.

Here's my brief review of the 870IS of the features I like specifically ..., maybe helping you answer "What digital camera should I buy?"

Overall, it's a spectacular pocket-sized camera for the money.

• It turns on and becomes usable in about 2 seconds. Sweet.
• The camera has an orientation sensor, which usually are only in DSLR cameras. This is a great feature and in very few cameras today. Instead of manually rotating your photos, the photos include a tiny piece of data that indicates which way you were holding the camera. Most modern photo manipulation software will read this flag and automatically display the photo in the correct orientation. If you take a look at my gallery linked below, you'll see that some of the photos are rotated -- I didn't need to do a thing to make that work. Awesome. One less thing for me to manipulate when loading photos.
• Big bright LCD screen (3 inches diagonal). I had the Canon 800 and it had a nice screen, but the 870 puts it to shame really.
• Simple mode switching (from video to a program mode to automatic with a small switch on the top).
• The lens is protected when off.
• The "On" button is located on the top and is difficult to accidentally turn on.
• Fits nicely in my front pants pocket (although I'd recommend getting a simple screen protector to avoid scratching the LCD screen). You can be a tourist without looking like a tourist!
• Easy to learn and tweak the settings. Most stuff is automatic though if you want it to be. But, if you're willing to branch out, it has a lot of nice tweakable settings to help you get the shot you wanted.
• The video and audio feature work surprisingly well. Over Christmas, I shot some video of my little nephew around the house and I must say that I'm not likely to ever want to carry a camcorder again (as my video shots tend to be short anyway). The resolution is 640x480, which is good enough to capture the memories of the moment. The microphone quality is much better than I expected ... music, voices, everything carries through very nicely considering it's just a digital camera! (There are several settings to adjust the quality and the size of the files).
• The model has image stabilization built in. It definitely has allowed me to take shots without the aid of a tripod that I wouldn't have otherwise been able to take. It's not magic though, and it's definitely possible to take blurry shots -- but it decreases the frequency if you use it wisely. It has a little on screen warning when the shot you're about to take may be blurry. In lower light situations, this can prevent the disappointing shot you might have taken with other non image stabilized cameras.
• Really long battery life (in the many hundreds of shots). I haven't done a scientific study or anything though ..., but it's more than adequate for a day of shooting (with some use of the flash).
• Face detection -- helps take better shots of people (a bit gimmicky, but I must say that the people shots I've taken look consistently nice!)

I've posted some sample shots I've taken with the SD870 on SmugMug here.

Manufacturer's page.

Thankfully, they don't put stickers on the camera for all of these features ... otherwise, there'd be no actual camera exposed!

Amazon's: Canon PowerShot SD870IS (there are about 100 reviewers there giving it about 4.5 stars).