The two things I bought full price off an electronics or camera shop one was an AE1 camera with a nice piece of glass, and the other was a Samsung vhs camera. Both were well over $5oo and both took a crap. The cannon lasted years but was dead before a decade, replaced by a used tx body.
The Samsung took six months and needed hundreds to replaced the viewfinder and operability. Luckily it was the only thing I ever bought extended warrantee for.
Since then I figure most cameras do mostly the same thing, and a bazzilion extra pictils still just make a picture.
The only new feature I would shop for is the panoramic shot.
Most the pictures I shot in the last five years were on an argus beanspout. Simple, keychain sized easy to have one all the time and makes [crappy] small enough files to post directly to the forum without uploading to a host or converting size.
