If you have a computer and it has a USB port on it then you really should get a digital camera.

I got my first digital camera over 5 years ago. I took it to California for the JavaOne conference in San Francisco.

Since then, I have bought a second digital camera with much higher resolution that is really small and light – and only cost me $100.

Also, I bought a cell phone that has digital camera built into it, as does my miniDV camcorder. So I am pretty well stockedwith them now.

Why would you want a digital camera?

• no need to get prints you don’t like – if it looks like crap on the LCD, it will look like crap on paper
• if you don’t like it – delete and redo, right there – on the spot
• photos can upload to your computer in seconds; modern hard drives hold LOTS of them – typically all you need is a film media card to USB port adapter; they typically cost $20 for very plain ones to $50 for extremely nice ones which might even have a video output port
• you can upload your favorite photos to Flickr.com, Yahoo.com, or – if you have a Mac and a .Mac subscription to mac.com.
• you can organize them really easily in iPhoto, if you have a Mac
• you can print your favorite photos from iPhoto, .Mac, Yahoo, or Flickr
• you can email your vacation photos, portraits, pet photos, significant other’s mug, house photos, new car photos, gooofy photos to friends and family (personally, I think putting them on Flickr or similar site makes more sense)
• you can back them up onto CD
• you can make a DVD slide show of them with iDVD (on Macintosh)
• you can alter, clean up, or crop them with a photo editing program
• you can print them yourself to photo quality paper with an ink jet printer for your computer

Apple just came out with a souped-up commercial version of iPhoto called Aperture that blends a database into the photo albumb program, as well as a ton of powerful image-processing commands.

Most people will be perfectly happy with iPhoto which comes with new Macs and can be bought as part of the iLife ‘05 software bundle for people who want to add it to or update it on older Macs.

There are programs to do similar things on PCs, although I have never been happy with one on Microsoft Windows and I have used a bunch of them. Some of those programs cost more than a brand-new Mac – which includes iPhoto anyway!