If your budget is absollutely capped at $300, you’ll need to leave enough room for a good memory card and you can get an "almost as good" Canon A630 for $215.
I own a few Nikon DSLR’s and I’d buy the Canon A630 or A640 for myself.
The A620, which was the precursor to these cameras, was rated about twice as good as any other camera as far a battery life by Consumer Reports in their camera tests in 2006. I hope the A630 and A640 are just as good. If you prefer not to use rechargeable batteries, use Energizer e² LITHIUM batteries and you will be happy with battery life.
With either camera, you will find that the included memory card is a cute little token of thanks from Canon, but not much more. Buy a 1 or 2 GB Sandisk Ultra II or Extreme III card. You will NEED the increased capacity and write speed to fully realize the benefits of your camera. The Ultra II would be excellent, but if you are really into video, you might prefer the faster Extreme III.
As far as video goes, Canon says, "Select from VGA (640 x 480 pixels) and QVGA (320 x 240 pixels), with frame rates of 30 fps and 15 fps for recording up to 1 hour or 1GB."
A640: http://www.steves-digicams.com/2006_reviews/a640.html
A630: http://www.steves-digicams.com/2006_reviews/a630.html
If you want a sleek, smaller camera that will easily fit in your pocket, consider the Canon Powershot SD600. It gives up some of the features of the A630 and 640, but at least it still has an optical viewfinder, which I consider to be essential.
SD 600: http://www.steves-digicams.com/2006_reviews/sd600.html
If you want to trim the budget a little, the Canon Powershot A550 or A540 are great choices. You will need a decent memory card, though. I’d say get at least 512 MB.
http://www.steves-digicams.com/2007_reviews/a550.html
http://www.steves-digicams.com/2006_reviews/a540.html
I think the A540 is being closed out, but you may still find it in the stores.
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