Yeah, I guess I have to agree... for the ultimate in "I don't care if it gets banged up", you can't beat the disposable P&S film cameras. I took three of them with me on a trip to Disneyworld, and I didn't fret a bit about handing the camera to strangers to take shots of me with my girlfriend, or worry about it being banged around in my backpack. I would have probably not done that with my Nikon.
Comparing and contrasting Digital and Film, and assuming that you're not going high-end on either..
*Either will have some level of zoom capability.
*Film will give better ability to "blow up" a shot to larger sizes.
*Digital gives instant gratification, assuming you have a computer.
*At $7.50 a roll for film and developing, you'll spend quite a bit per picture you take. With a digital, you might have to spend a little more for a good sized memory card up front, but every picture you take lowers your "price per click".
*With film, you have to change rolls every 24 or 36 frames. With a digital, you are only limited by the size of your card and/or batteries. My dad has a 512MB card (less than $60 online) for his Fuji, and I've taken over 250 shots with it (including many with flash) without running out of power or space on the card. This makes a HUGE difference if you're walking through a museum, zoo, or similar. I would have had to spend about $30 on film and $45 on developing for those shots, and had to fiddle with the camera much more had it not been digital.
*Many digitals are able to take short movies.
*One of the dirty secrets of photography is that you tend get maybe one really nice picture per about 20 that you take. (This is assuming you're going for "nice" pictures, and not just documenting sailboat rigging or something.) With film, you pay for the other 19 crappy photos, in addition to the 1 you want to keep.
*I can fit 700 3-Megapixel digital photos on a single CD, and make as many copies as I want to distribute to family or friends for aprox 25 cents per disk.
*With the low "price per click" of digital, you can document things you wouldn't necessarily take film shots of... like disassembling an engine step-by-step. I've done some sailboat rigging for a friend, and I took a digital camera up the mast with me when I went up. I took quite a few pictures from many different angles of the masthead and associated rigging. When I got home, I burned a CD for my friend containing all the shots I had taken, which gives him documentation of his masthead. This makes it MUCH easier for him to buy replacement rigging parts and to plan which pieces he wants to replace next. I probably wouldn't have done that with film, and it definitely would have cost more.
A good place to research your Digital camera options is
www.dpreview.com