I'm not an expert on digicams, but I did this which I hope will help you narrow down to a short list.
I ran a pricerunner check with max £170 and this is the result
result
Then from renowned
www.dpreview.com on the forum where camera owners give their opinions and also give scores on Construction, Features, Image quality, Ease of use, Value for money = Overall
All very similar spec, as in ca 3mil pixel, 3x zoom, the rest of specs can be found at
www.dpreview.com, www.steves-digicams.com, www.imaging-resource.com, all 3 extremely renowned for their tests, while I want to add
www.dcviews.com which has a superb summary page for each camera and links to all the good tests around the web.
Here are most of them.
Fuji Finepix A310 £150 = 9resp, ov score 4.52
Kodak DX6340 £160 = 29resp, ov score 4.32
Kodak DX6330 £151 = 6resp, ov score 4.2
Konica KD3300 £148 - not in the site, but based on the older KD300 which got 22resp, ov score 4.3, it should be better
Olympus C-350 £140 = 21resp, ov score 3.95
Olympus C-450 £174(4mil pixel) but not in the website
Sony Cybershot DCS-P72 £171.5 = 46resp, ov score 4.37
Minolta Dimage E323 £127 = 3resp, ov score 3.37
Kyocera Finecam S3L £157 = 2resp, ov score 4.75
Kyocera Finecam L3 £176 = 3resp, ov score 4.2
Kyocera Fincam L30 £156 - replace L3, too new for comments.
Samsung Digimax V420 £170 = 20resp, ov score 4.55
Pentax Optio 33L £160 = 8resp, ov score 4.66
Pentax Optio 33LF £179 = 4resp, ov score 4.78
Interesting and fun feature are movie clips (all my friends think long movie clips are worth more than 1milj extra pixel). Gives you a good hint on how new the technology the camera has;
Fuji A310 - 320x240/160x120 & 10fps & unl time dep on memory
Kodak 340&330 - says movie clips yes, no other info
Konica KD3300 - 320x240 & max 15s
Kyocera L30 - 320x240/160x120 & 15fps/30fps & max 30s/120s
Kyocera L3 - 320x240/160x120 & max 30/120s
Kyocera S3L - 320x240/160x120 & max 30/120s
Minolta E323 - 320x240/160x120 & 15fps & max 45s
Olympus C350/450 - 320x240/160x120 & 15fps and max 15s
Pentax 33LF - 320x240 & 15fps & unl time dep on memory
Pentax 33L - 320x240 & 15fps & max 30s
Samsung V420 - 288x208
Sony P72 - 640x480 & 16fps & unlimited time, dep on memory
I think Fuji A310, Sony P72, Pentax 33LF would be interesting. Fuji and Pentax are quite new and Sony 1year old.
Wasabi