I would advise you very much against the Sony Cybershot. I had it for less than a year when I decided to call it a loss because 30% of my pictures were blurred (Never once in my life have I had a problem before). Read the reviews on amazon.com, many others agree with me.

I got a Canon Elph Powershot and I have been nothing but happy with its performance.

I think Melissa had it right. I'd recommend buying a camera from a long-time CAMERA mfr. like Canon, Nikon, Olympus, Leica. They have the optics & moving parts down pat. It is easier for them to introduce digital electronics and produce a superior product, than it is for a primarily electronics company to succeed with optics. Careful with the Rebel; it is a digital SLR, so it would be in the size and weight category of your film camera.

Some of Sony's digital cameras are pretty good. For example, most people like the DSC-H2 and -H5, which get excellent reviews on dpreview.com.

BTW, Sony's compact digital cameras have Carl Zeiss lens, so it's not like they're starting from nowhere. Same with Panasonic - which is also producing excellent compact cameras with Leica lenses. In fact, some Leica digital cameras are just rebadged Panasonics.

[Sony's new dSLR is a separate issue, which they took over Konica/Minolta's SLR and dSLR business.]

Here's an update on my camera quest:
I ended up choosing the Sony Cybershot DSC-H5 with a 12x zoom. I thought that the digital slr rebel sounded appealing, but too big a step for someone new to digital cameras and who hadn't taken any photos that weren't simply snapshots since college.

So far I'm really, really happy with the ease of use. I haven't explored all the features yet, though. The quality of the photos look "professional" to me in terms of color accuracy and sharpness. The computer interface is great~ in fact, I got inspired to become a first-time seller on e-bay.

Let's see how it does with Paris~