I don’t think you can go wrong with a kodak easyshare camera, Doesn’t have to be an expensive one, 5-8 megs should be fine. I would suggest you get a model that has rechargable batteries. Kodak seem to be easy to use and their software is pretty good.
We currently have a canon s45 (pretty old now) and a sony cybershot dsc w50 (2 years or so old) both of which are nice camera’s without problems.