SONY?

I'd go with a Nikon if you want affordability matched with quality.

Canon are usually considered good for the money.

Canon are top of the range.

Can we get an age and a price range?

I agree with Sargmacher. Not pocket sized but my Nikon takes visibly better pictures than my mother's price equivalent Canon.

What's it going to be used for, because if its for any kind of sport thing I gotta say gopro.

as a semi-pro (i get paid to shoot bands and portraits but make most of my income elsewhere), i would say that brand and megapixels are the least important things. more pixels just means you can blow it up bigger. since you can reasonably blow up an 8mp image to fill a billboard, i'd say anything after that is overkill. you throw away almost all of that resolution when you put pics up on facebook or print them out smaller than 20x30 or so. the specs that ARE important are: the SIZE of the sensor, shutter lag, and the quality of the lens. i'd rather have a BIG 8mp sensor than a tiny, shitty 12mp sensor. bigger sensor equals less noise and shit in your image. also, pay attention to how long the shutter lag is. shutter lag is the time between when you press the button and when the picture gets taken. on an SLR, shutter lag is 0. on a little point and shoot, it can be as much as a second, which is absolutely unacceptable. the lower the shutter lag, the better, because you will actually get the picture you take (Remember that there are (usually) 2 positions to the shutter button: slight half-press will focus and meter the image and then full press will fire. If you go straight for the full button press, you can expect to wait a moment either way while the camera figures out what the fuck you're trying to take a picture of, and how to make it look good).

as to the lens, there's not much you can do to help. that's why an SLR is great. you can change out lenses and use quality glass. a better lens will make your image sharper, but also more pleasing in general. observe the effect by going here:

http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/dont-be-ugly-by-accident/

and scrolling down to the picture of the girl in the purple dress. you can see that the better the lens, the better the image QUALITY. bear in mind that a better camera also tends to be a result of a better photographer, so it's not exactly as linear as it looks.

I don't have any concrete suggestions, because I don't pay attention to the point and shoot market. i use a big boy camera :D

@Balls

lol Way to suggest a Jaguar when someone's asking about a first car for their kid.