I've had and used a few.
The main thing you want is chunky controls, the ability to operate it with one hand, and a good optical zoom (digital zoom is a waste of time). For decent resolution, you want at-least 3MPix. For simplicity, you need the ability to just turn it on, point and press.
I had a Kodak LS443 (now discontinued 4Mpix job), with a 3x optical zoom, that worked rather well - until it broke beyond economic repair at about 2 years old. I briefly dallied with a 5Mpix BenQ digital, but it was too small and fiddly to operate in a cockpit, and frankly unreliable (I did buy it very cheap second hand).
I've just bought a Yakumo MegaImage 410, which I'm just starting to play with - so far I'm quite impressed - 4Mpix, a big chunky handgrip on one side, and an 8x optical zoom. It also takes AA batteries (the biggest headache with the Kodak was the oddball NP60 battery, which was impossible to charge or replace away from home). So far the only thing I'm not all that happy with is the lack of an optical viewfinder, but that's common to many digicams now and hard to avoid.
This is the beastie (second from bottom of page) if you want to take a look - not a bad price (I paid £110). (But I reserve the right after a couple of months to say I hate it
).
(And from an Engineering photography viewpoint, it's got a macro function down to 100mm, which combined with the equivalent of a 300ish mm SLR lens, is good enough around an aeroplane and lab, but not sure it'd tie up to a boro ).
G