I am wondering what others view as the best value for the dollar for digital cameras?

Getting a camera for a friend as a gift. I have two weeks to find and buy the camera. Obviously I'll try to look for a good deal, but I'm not very camera savvy. I have and like the Canon Powershot A450? It is older but works for me. I am decent at finding deals but would like some information toward which cameras I should focus my deal search on. The person does not plan to do anything advanced with the camera, but regular use, vacation, party pictures and facebook uploads...

Budget is around ~120-200

Here are some candidates I found:

Canon PowerShot A1100 IS
Nikon Coolpix S550
Sony Cyber-shot DSC-W150
Casio EXILIM 8.1 MP Digital Camera, Model: EX-Z80VP

Feel free to Pm any relevant information to me as well as posting here.
Thank you in advance,

Greyrabbit

If outdoor use is the priority, Canon cameras have excellent reviews regarding picture quality. However, at a given price point, you can probably get more zoom with another brand (don't worry about megapixels, any more than 6 usually do not improve the image with a point and shoot). Kodak has very inexpensive cameras with a lot of zoom and they really aren't bad at all.

If the friend wants to use the camera indoors a lot (parties, facebook), most small point and shoot cameras can only take sharp indoor photos using flash. Using flash, most cameras make your subject look unattractive or wash out the background.

There are 3 ways to try to get around this. 1. Turn off flash, and hope the image stabilization and your steadiness of hand allows the photo to be sharp. If you get a sharp photo, with most cameras the ISO will be boosted high and the picture will be very grainy. These photos, if shrunk to screen size, often look just fine - the grain usually only shows up if you zoom in or look closely. The results can be improved by forcing the ISO lower than the default. If you manually set the ISO to a setting that is not very grainy with your camera, if you are able to get the photo not blurry it will also avoid grain. To do this, take more than one shot (often cameras have a best shot mode that takes several pictures without flash and keeps the sharpest of them, or a burst mode that takes many and you then later pick the best yourself).

2. Use flash, and post-process the image in Photoshop or a similar program. It is very possible to take an image where the subject looks like a crash test dummy and the background looks almost completely black and by adjusting the curves and doing some other adjustments, make an image that looks really good. If your camera supports RAW mode this is even more successful. However, this takes learning and some time and effort, and is a little harder to do with the Gimp (which is free).

3. Use flash in "night portrait" mode, with image stabilization if possible. This uses flash to light the subject, and then uses a long exposure after the flash is off to capture the background. You still have to hold the camera steady, but this mode is much more forgiving than the no-flash mode and has less grain. Since no-flash photos are hard to get without grain or blur, and Photoshop is time consuming, this would be my suggestion. Night portrait mode does not add to the cost of a camera and most cameras have it (check to make sure), but you have to remember to use the mode and it works best if you also have image stabilization. Some Panasonic and Sony cameras have "iA" or intelligent auto, which means they can automatically choose a scene mode for you and may activate night portrait without the user having to remember. Even before intelligent auto, I have seen good results from Sony and Panasonic cameras in night portrait mode, I think this is because they have good optical image stabilization. Canon is also not a bad choice here, if you get one of their cameras with IS.