thoughts on new Canon compacts?

I have a tax refund coming and had been thinking of buying an A610,
but suddenly there's a flock of new models in that series. Any
thoughts about whether the A610 is still a good choice? It's a bit
larger than I'd really like, but it has a 1/1.8" sensor and very long
battery life. On the other hand the new A700 has image stabilization,
though I'll reserve judgement about that til I see some test reports.
The new models use two AA cells instead of four, so they have less
power available, but on the other hand they're smaller. Unless
there's a big loss in handling speed I guess I prefer small size.

Things I care about to varying degrees
- good clean images, preferably at high ISO
- fast handling
- use AA batteries
- wideangle coverage
- compact size
- external (bounce) flash capability, doesn't seem to exist in
compacts any more.
- CF memory is preferable but not that big a deal.

Things I don't care about (much):
- high megapixels
- long telephoto
.

Relevant Pages

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