After experience with other digital cameras, I decided that I did not want a camera with a proprietary battery. Those batteries are both expensive and hard to come by, especially when travelling. The Canon A60 uses four double-A batteries, which are inexpensive and widely available.

I watch the memory markets closely, and I knew that I wanted Compact Flash as the memory card type. First of all, compact flash cards are the cheapest cards on the market. (Go to Pricewatch.com and click on "Flash Card" to confirm.) Second, these cards come in the largest capacities, up to 4GB. Finally, I had recently purchased a very inexpensive USB compact flash card reader with a 128MB card, so that I could move files between computers. Thus, I could use my compact flash cards seamlessly for both the camera and for transferring files. For all these reasons, my camera had to use Compact Flash memory. The Canon A60 uses compact flash cards for storing the digital pictures.

I do not care for high zoom factors, especially digital zoom factors. Digital zoom can be done easily in photo editing software. The Canon A60 has a 3x optical zoom and 2.5x digital zoom. The digital zoom is thankfully disabled by default, and the 3x optical zoom is sufficient for composing shots of family and friends. I also did not care for movie modes, and I would prefer to buy a separate video camera for that purpose. The Canon A60 can record short video clips with sound. This is a nifty bonus, but I personally have no real use for it.