Have to give a plus 1 for the Canon s100. It's a great camera with fine image quality and Canon's latest Image processor "Digic 5". As a bonus you can hack it using CHDK (Canon Hack Development Kit) if you are into those sort of stuff.
Also consider Mirrorless camera's like Olympus EP, Sony NEX. They are bit out of your budget range but gives more manual control over the camera.
Cheers!