My Nikon Coolpix is busted!

So I get my Aspire One, I'm all excited and grab my camera (Nikon S50) to take some unboxing photos and what-not. Camera boots up... says "Memory card is write protected". Unfortunately the card is not in write protect mode. Neither is the 2rd or 3rd SD Card that I try! WTF?!

After considerable hair-pulling and googling, I discovered there is a sensor inside the camera itself that is jammed. I pulled the camera apart and tinkered a bit, but with zero luck in repairing it.

At this point, I'm ready to get another camera, but this time, it won't be a Nikon, this is the second Coolpix I've had in 3 years that glitched up horribly at the 1.5 year point.

Does anyone have a suggestion for a decent camera in the $100-$200 range? In the meantime, I can still take a dozen medium resolution photos on the internal camera memory.