If you're not dead set on an SLR, there's only one camera I would recommend to you.
Canon G9.
My wife wanted a small camera to take everywhere with her, and take on business trips. I got a little depressed at the thought, because all the little cameras are one compromise piled on top of another. We've had a few Olympus cameras that were great for a while, like the old 5050. That is, until they broke down; they don't make the new Olympus's like the old ones, that's for sure.
I should say that I'm a camera guy, and I still use film. It's not that I don't like digital, in fact I love the idea, just like I love film for some things; it's just that until recently I haven't found a digital SLR that I liked well enough to shell out the cash they were charging for them. Things have changed though, and Canon and Nikon both have some great cameras. Nevertheless, for that greatness, you're still going to pay well over 1k. Down the pike are some awesome critters from Sony, but that's down the pike.
So we went from store to store, and we'd narrowed the list down to a few models of the less craptastic variety. Finally, after seeing all the flaws of the cameras, compromise for compromise, after two weeks, she finally said "I've had enough, what do you want me to get?"
Easy answer. The G9 has full manual control, super customization, rugged build quality, excellent 12 MP count, short delay, low noise, RAW and most importantly of all, a great image processor, the Digic III. This is the only serious contender these days for great camera award when you don't need or want an SLR or another format. I'm sorry Leica, it's just true.
Photo Journalists use this camera when they don't have the space for an SLR or can't lug the gear up hills. This is also the camera that serious photographers carry as their backups to their major cameras, when two SLR's are just too heavy. Those guys were shooting with cameras that were great back in the day, like the Olympus 5050. They tossed them in the trash as soon as the G series came down the pike.
You sacrifice interchangeable lenses, and you accept a small parallax because there's no mirror to look through. For that, you get a camera that you can fit in your pocket, a camera that doesn't weigh much, and a camera that most likely will outlive all the other craptastic camera products on the market these days, short of those great SLR's that cost big bucks. Most importantly, it takes breathtaking pictures, and has a surprising amount of accessorization, like telephoto lenses and add-on grips. It's a serious camera, not a toy. It's got such a great, big, colorful LCD on the back, that you won't even use the good viewfinder, that is corrected and zooming, unlike most unibody cameras.
Read the reviews online, I doubt you'll find one person that says the camera is not the bee's knees. Like I said, if you don't need an SLR, or would love to find something lighter that doesn't demand that enormous bag slung on your shoulder, this is the camera. If you ever had an SLR back in the day, you know how annoying it was to lug around the bag, and all the weight. Probably half the time you just left the camera at home to save the trouble. Although it only has a 6X optical, it's a good one. To be sure, Nikon and Sony have excellent lenses on their upper end non-SLR cameras, but the rest of the features don't stack up.
The best part about all this is that you can get this camera for just a bit north of $400.
For the features and price, there is nothing, I mean nothing that holds a tiny candle to this thing.
