Skunks, I love my Coolpix 995. If you find one of those or the newer (but already discontinued) Coolpix 4500 used or refurbed, give it a try. (I have had good luck buying used stuff from
www.bhphoto.com.)
The other camera I had my eye on was a Fuji Finepix 3800... out of my price range at the time. A 6x optical zoom (I'm a big fan of at least 4x because you have very few lens options unless you're going with a digital SLR which is obviously out of your price range... and digital zoom is useless IMO, so you can discount it in your comparisons) plus a very compact, well-designed package ... definitely worth a look.
I agree with That Guy, dpreview.com is great. stevesdigicams.com is also worth a look. For more general photography advice, but still with some camera discussion, check out photo.net.
My advice would be to not worry about the firewire connection for the camera. I don't think they're very common, at least not at the low end of the price range, and you're better off going for photography features that are important. You can certainly get a firewire memory card reader to match whatever card format your camera uses.