Your most important concern should be the camera's ability to render accurate color and a decent macro mode. There are a lot of reasonably priced cameras (150-300 dollar range or so) out there which will do just fine.
Some help reading those spec cards that they put on the cameras at the store:
Megapixels: The most important thing the megapixel rating tells you is how large of a high quality print you will be able to make out of the pictures you take. A 3.2 megapixel is going to make great pix up to letter size, a 2.x megapixel camera is going to be good up to about 5x7 size. You can go up to five, six, or even eight megapixels, but for most average applications, it's not really necessary.
When you look at zoom on a digital camera, ignore anything but the optical zoom number. Most snap shot type cameras are either the sort of compact type with 3x optical, which is fine for herps or kids, but not so good for stuff further away like sporting events or trips to the zoo. If you want to do more pics at longer range, you should look at an Optical zoom of at least 8x to 10x. The cameras with the larger optical zoom start about four hundred and up.
Be prepared to get some rechargeable batteries if the camera doesn't include them. Be sure to get a larger capacity memory card, b/c higher megapixel cameras will make much larger files.
Some decent brands are:
Kodak: Ease of use, good (IMO) color-rendering, some models have excellent macro.
Canon: Fairly easy to use, most models provide a good number of manual options, and the Powershot series (smaller cameras with 3x or so optical zoom) has a ring to put on attachable lenses and filters (a higher optical zoom lense is about a hundred bucks retail.) Better picture quality by most accounts than Kodak.
Olympus: Great optics, very nice picture quality.
Nikon: Coolpix line always good quality.
I'd suggest you head out to your local store (office supply stores are good) and play around with some, then take the little tickets they have on them home, or jot down the model numbers and prices, and do a search for reviews on the models you're interested in.
Ask about your retailer's return policy. Where I work, you get fourteen days, no restocking fee, and no questions asked on tech returns. So, you could buy one, take a bunch of pics with it, and if it doesn't perform as desired, you can simply swap it for another one of your choices.
A good site to look for user reviews and to buy from (good on returns but if you just don't like the product, you'll get hit with a restock fee) is
www.newegg.com. The user base is pretty knowledgeable, and many of the reviews posted on the product listings are decent.
Hope that helps.
