Looking for digital camera with specific features

   I was about to buy an HP e427 digital camera, when circuit city jacked the
price up $20 on me.

  So, I'm still looking.  Here is what I want:

1) fixed focus (no optical zoom), or with a lever that lets you get very
close to things

2) 4+ megapixels

3) 4 AA batteries, or else a 3 Amp-Hour or better
    rechargeable battery built in (absolutely no AAA
   batteries! - they don't last long enough.)  I'd really
   rather have one that used a couple of C cells.

4) Camera defaults to putting all of the pictures taken on
    the same day into a folder labelled with that date
   (this is VERY important to me - for a short time I
   had a Kodak that just put them all in the same
   communal folder, and I hated it)

5) under $100

6) good reviews online

7) no proprietary flash format

  Unfortunately, I've found lots of cameras under $100, even a 10 megapixel
one, where people are saying it is fuzzier than they expected, slower than
they expected, etc.  The HP e427 was one of only a few where people seem to
be MORE satisfied than they expected to be, after trying it out.

  Anyone have any suggestions?  Thanks!

  I just checked Circuit City Web site and it is going for $80. Well
within your budget. What am I missing?

 
Not necessarily, depends on what its power consumption is like compared with the
other one.

 If you are that fussy, you're mad to not just pay the extra $20.

 
See the comments below


Focus and zoom are NOT the same thing.

Very few cameras have fixed focus - that means the lens does not move
and every thing from X feet out is more or less in focus. Cheap
disposable film cameras use this technique. I actually have an old
digital camera that does this, but not many do. You will probably not
find one, except for the real cheap ones, or the cameras in cell
phones.

Zoom is changing the length of the lens - which impacts the size of
the image - wide angle to telephoto. Optical zoom does this by
cropping the image - which loses you quality. You can find non zoom
models, again, most have some zoom these days - if you don't want to
use it, don't.


Pretty standard these days.

This varies. I have one camera (Kodak z700) which gets me 400 pics on
2 photo grade AAs. I have another which gets me 200 pics on 4 AAs. It
depends on the LCD display needs, power of the flash etc.

C cells are too big for most digital cams.


If you use the MS Windows XP camera wizard, you can create a folder
every time you download pictures. Name it whatever you want. Thats
what I do


Check out places that sell refurbs, like Tigerdirect  - I bought one
there 2 years ago and its still working fine.
Or craiglist - lots of people selling good older cameras cause they
are trading up.


I trust Digital Photographiew review - www.dpreview.com
I don't trust the review you get on sites that sell cameras.


Not sure what you mean by proprietary flash

More megapixels does not always mean better picture quality - its just
more pixels and that is one factor in image quality. I recently bought
a 6MP camera for a fair chunk of change ($300) that outperforms some
10 MP cameras on quality - good lens, good CCD, good firmware etc.

James