High Sierra Topix

Hi, all. I'm bumping this topic because my five-year-old Fuji A303 seems to have bit the dust. What I'm looking for is something quite light and compact (mostly for backpacking), something I can just haul out of the shoulder-strap pocket and shoot, and something with good macro capability for wildflowers (the Fuji A303 was not every good in this regard). I also think I'd like an optical viewfinder, both because I think it lets me shoot faster for wildlife and because I find the screens difficult to see in daylight. Although I respect what was posted earlier about battery packs, I'm still leaning toward AAs because I do like those lithiums: they're extremely light, they seem to last practically forever, and I've been able to take pictures on ski trips when I could see that other skiers couldn't (but I don't know what they were using).

I'm thinking of a Cannon Powershot SD 1100 IS Elph (which doesn't take AAs), or maybe the relatively new Powershot E1 (which does), but I definitely haven't settled on those two as my main choices yet. Suggestions?

-B2

B^2,
Check out dpreview.com for comparisons of different cameras. They have a cool feature where you can input the things you want, like a macro lens, battery type, etc, then it will give the the available cameras with those features. Here's a link
http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/compare.asp