I'm looking a buy a fairly basic day-to-day camera.

My budget would probably be up to about £100 and i'd like something functional and quite small. If it had a good optical zoom then that would be a bonus and preferably a viewfinder.

The only digital camera I have great experience of using is my Dad's, which is maybe 4 years old and a Samsung. The main criteria he had when buying was that it should have a viewfinder as well a screen and it used AA batteries.

I quite like having a viewfinder and although in general it doesn't get used it is handy for saving battery. The main thing though is whether to go for a rechargable camera. My Dad's seems to just eat batteries - i've found that using it with a flash/screen for pictures will cause the battery to run down very quickly. I don't know if this is because its quite old so newer cameras would have less power consumption, but the one thing with AA batteries is that you can just carry a few spares but you can't carry a mains plug to recharge. On the other hand, if one charge would let you take 100 pictures, say, then that would be fine and I would always have a chance to charge it. Any advice?

If you're spending up to £100 you can get a decent camera. A couple of points. Stick to proper camera brands like Canon, Nikon, Sony, Fuji, Olympus etc. The non named brands that offer 12 mega pixels etc are usually rubbish. If you go for a knewn brand you might be looking at 5-7 mega pixels but that is more than enough.

I got a Canon from Tesco for about £59 in a sale. I just wanted something small and cheap to carry around. Takes rechargeables and takes excellent shots.