After doing some PPing of my vacation pics from May, one thing I've definitely come to a conclusion on, at least for myself, is that if I'm going to get a backup P&S, it needs to be able to shoot in RAW format. There were several that were too dark that I was able to save because I had shot them in RAW; if I had shot them in JPG format, whether or not I could've saved them would've been a toss-up.
Several that have been mentioned around here lately include:
Canon G9--if you want to save some money and don't need 12MP, take a look at any other model in the G series other than the G7 (for some reason, Canon opted to leave RAW out of the G7).
Fuji E-900-the only downer on this one is that it takes XD cards
Panasonic LX2/Leica D-Lux 3--if I had to buy one today, I would most likely get the Panasonic. It's also smaller and cheaper than the G9, which is a plus for me.
Heather