The canon ixus series are a very good compact camera, i've got the 900ti version and it rivals many very expensive slr's the only thing it doesnt do is raw picture format.
That one (like mine) comes with a li-ion battery pack, mine has a rather good battery life
yes it was all in one go and bright daylight (so no flash used) but i managed to fill a 4GB SD card with pics and take a fair few on a second card (around 700 pictures and 15mins of movies) and then transfer the pics to my computer and the battery didnt even read as low.
The only complaint i have is the battery monitor only warns you that its low literally when its about to die. So i'd advise getting a second battery so that you allways have a one full battery
It's just outside your price range on amazon, however if you shop around you might get it for less,
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Canon-Digita...8555067&sr=1-1
i got mine through digital-rev last christmas and got the camera + spare bat + pouch & wrist straps for around £230 delivered (from HK)
Not sure what the postage is but its
http://www.digitalrev.com/en/product...&category_id=6
£168.99+vat, thats for a uk model, but i got the ixy1000 which is the hk model which is abit cheaper and the only difference aside from the name is that it only supports two language, english and japanese. It came with an english manual tho
http://www.digitalrev.com/en/product...&category_id=6