Any advice on purchasing a digital camera?

[SittinOnDubsWGW]

I'm going to get a digital camera sometime in the middle of the month and have been looking around. I am by no means a professional photographer, but have thought about taking it up as a hobby and taking a few photography classes at the university. So I am looking for a nice "starter" camera that will be nice enough to use for quite some time also. I'd like to keep the price of the camera under $300.

I have so far been looking at mainly the Sony cameras because I have heard that they are pretty easy to use and are good quality and am kind of leaning towards the DSCP73 which is a 4.1 MegaPixel that has 3x optical zoom and 2x digital zoom for $280

All advice is welcome.

Thanks a lot,
Kyle.