Canon A410 - final advice?

Which would you choose? There's a small price difference when I looked at the two of them on Amazon.

The numbers game:
The camera makers try to offer a camera for every price range.

Spend a bit more money and get more features.

Here is a look at the specifications for the two cameras:

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/compare_post.asp?method=sidebyside&cameras=canon_a410%2Ccanon_a510&show=all

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The most important feature you get with the A510 is manual controls (aperture priority, shutter priority, program mode and full manual).

This permits the photographer to override the automatic settings that the camera chooses.

Example: It is a sunny day and you photograph a child running across your field of view. The camera is trying to produce a perfectly lit photo, so it selects a shutter speed of (let's say) 1/100th of a second and an f-stop setting of f8.

But what you will get is a perfectly lit photo of a blurred child.

The camera also could have chosen a faster shutter speed and a resulting different f-stop and gotten a perfectly lit photo of a child (no blur - frozen in time). But the camera didn't know the child was running.

By using Shutter Priority, you could choose a shutter speed of 1/250th of a second and the camera will choose the appropriate f-stop.

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The point-and-shoot cameras like the A410 have introduced "scene modes" that help with situations as I outlined above. If you select a scene mode called "action" or "sports", that will tell your camera to choose a higher speed shutter setting.

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Many other people told me that A510 is much better than any other camera (when you've got >140$, of course) and that's better to give 15$ more for it.
As I say, I'm just a beginner and I'll use that camera at home or when I'm tripping or something like that. Nothing unusual. So may be I'll take the A410. And after time, when I want better performance, I'll buy another
Thank you all.

I read your link of the comparison. The A510 sensor is larger than A410, 1/2.5" to 1/3.2".
Does that make difference on the image quality?
I like A410 can take longer VGA movies. If the picture qualty around the same, I will buy A410.

You have to know that A510 is better than A410. Manual settings, sensor & etc. But you (and I) won't feel it, because we're beginners
That's why there is a 30$ difference between them. And don't forget that A510 is the older model.

The person who'll be getting this is an experienced SLR user, so she'll be able to take advantage of the added features and manual settings on the A510. If she was less experienced, we would've chosen the A410.

Dimatan, thanks so much for putting up this topic, it was really helpful.

We ordered it through Buydig.com, no tax and free shipping.