DP Review
I used to frequent this website more than this forum (HA!)
the one thing that you have to be wary about, with this website, is that the forums are full of 'measurebators' (people that only compare a camera's technical specs, and do so obsessively - its quite like penis envy, or a bunch of men standing around measuring their manhood with rulers if you will). a lot of the time, the people posting on the forums are mis-informed as well. it used to be a great place, but an onslought of careless users drove many of the more helpfull and informative posters away.
(if anyone is ever annoyed with how religious the mods here are about reminding us to use the search forum, dpreview is a very good example of how people who DONT do this ruin a forum for everyone) people will also tend to be brand loyal to a fault, they wont see problems with a camera because they are obsessed with canon/nikon - I would suggest only reading the websites official reviews, and look elsewhere for advice. the advice on the forums can often be misleading or inacurate. this is not to say that ALL posters there fall into this category....
Ed, are you a dp user? and have you had similar experiences?
good luck in the camera search! remember to try everything yourself in the store, and if you arent enlarging images beyond 8x10 on a regular basis, you don't need anything larger than 4MP.
other than that, I can personally vouch for both the Canon elph series (but avoid the 5 megapixel elph, the small sensor has problems with noise) and the nikon d70. some people dislike how complicated the d70 is, so unless you are really into photography, you may want to pass on this, but the elph was fantastic. I took mine everywhere, mostly rockclimbing, and it handled a lot. I also did a good amount of portfolio work with it before the d70, because while it was a point and shoot, it would still allow you to manually adjust the shutter speed, amoungst other things, which many PS cameras will not allow. the d70 can be iffy in low-light situations, and the canon elph s400 had an auto focus speed that was too slow for fast action situations, although I hear the new generation 4 megapixel elph has fixed this.
oops, another accidentally too long post...sorry.