Consumer conundrum

I'm in the market for a new camera. My current camera a Pentax Optio S30 was a gift from my dad - and I've used it for a year and a half, and I'm ready to move on.

I love the macro mode of this camera - and some of the program settings are pretty good. But otherwise I'm not thrilled. The shutter lag is long - and for some reason, I just can't get the white balance right on a sunny day. Maybe I need to play around with the ev compensation more, but there's only so much fiddling I want to do. Not only that, but it seems like I can't get a good image even on the puny 3X zoom - never mind the camera shake.

But...shopping for a new one. The options are bewildering. I don't think I want to go for a full SLR job, because I love the portability of my camera (though it's certainly not the smallest). I'm tempted by the compacts with nice zoom - i.e. 10X or 12X, but you clearly need an image stabiliser with those or it's way too shaky.

My husband is a pretty smart fellow, but he's not into photography at all. And I can't seem to engage him in the procurement process. As soon as we get near a camera store, he starts to get all whiny. He did go out with my twice camera shopping in the last week - but was no help. I bought nothing on either occasion, but he bought some electronics for himself on the first trip and two pairs of shoes on the second trip.

I've been doing some Internet shopping for the camera again tonight and started to tell him how it went when I stopped myself.

"I'm not supposed to talk about the camera anymore, am I?"
"That's right," he said.