This is the price you pay for the price you pay. 
You can get $200 cameras today that are significantly better than the top of the line cameras less than 5 years ago. And you got 9 years of use out of it! DSLRs are designed to be repaired, but compact consumer electronics haven’t been repairable for a long time. If they were, they’d cost 2-3 times as much.
Agreed. I got nine years out of it AND it didn’t cost me a dime. I got it with my Staples reward points/cash rewards. I use to do a lot of shipping with them, got 5% back on my shipping fees. I miss those days, I would get a new computer every year with my rewards.
Post an image we can download, and I’ll have a look at it and the EXIF and see if something strikes me as off. Also, an indoor picture that looks good.
Reported.
As long as you’re here, any luck with removing the batteries?
ETA: Well, you were here an hour ago…
Well, I let the camera sit without battery to drain the capacitors with no improvement. Sadly I am ready to throw in the towel and send the camera to the great beyond. However here is a few photos, perhaps it can give you some insight. Once again, thanks to all.
Outside picture: http://i746.photobucket.com/albums/xx104/obbn/100_0207.jpg
Inside picture: http://i746.photobucket.com/albums/xx104/obbn/100_0206.jpg
Looking at the inside photo there appears to be some ghosting on the left side.
Disregard dates on photos, I didn’t reset date after battery removal. Thanks again!
Have you cleaned the lens with a Q-tip and a little Windex or rubbing alcohol recently?
Don’t know if that’s the issue, but a dirty or smudged lens will reflect ambient light and make photos look really washed out.
Based on the exif it’s a metering or aperture problem.
The outside exposure was 1/333s at f/2.8, 100 ISO. That’s overexposed by about 3 stops - at f/2.8 the shutter speed ought to have been more like 1/3200s on a sunny day, not 1/333. I don’t think your camera’s shutter speed goes that high, so it should have closed down the aperture much smaller than f/2.8.
…and the aperture is at 2.8 both indoors and outdoors: it looks like the camera is stuck on that aperture.
The “ghosting” looks to be light reflected off the glass table top onto the wall. Same for the right side of the cabinet, reflecting off the TV.
Thanks for taking the time to look at the photos. So I guess there is no DIY fix for this. I am assuming it is a mechanical problem by your use of the term “stuck”. I hate to sound so anal about this issue, it has always bothered me to throw away useful items without attempting to find a fix.
It’s likely that the lens aperture is physically stuck, though it could also be an electronic problem preventing the camera from telling it to move. Either way it amounts to the same result.
It’s no longer a useful item. Throw it away.
…to be honest: my recommendation would be to bang it hard on something. One of either three things will happen: either nothing will happen at all, or you will bang it hard enough to change the aperture, or you will break the camera further. And as it is already broken, what do you have to loose? 
And of course, I’m curious to see the results!
But seriously, unless you want to spend a bit of money on it, I’d say your camera is dead. There are a few people discussing a stuck aperture in this thread:
http://www.digitalcamera-hq.com/products/kodak-easyshare-ls443
and some other people having problems:
http://www.dcresource.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-1076.html
I just noticed that on the first link, the first comment used the “fonzie fix”, and it worked! So if you are considering throwing it out, give it a bang before you do!
!
Good old Percussive Maintenance!
Well, I am planning on sending it to the great beyond this weekend, so what the hell. I will attempt the “fonzie” fix and see what happens. Follow up post in a few days.
And just to clear my name, as I said before I am not cheap. I just hate seeing everything so disposable today. Even items such as cars, so many items on a car are not repairable any longer, just toss the part and buy a new one.
Yeah, most of the signs point to it being a mechanical problem with the aperture not stopping down. I’m actually a little surprised that it didn’t report the aperture as f/5.6 or whatever the correct exposure would have been, because I would have assumed there’s no actual feedback from the physical mechanism reporting back to the EXIF metadata what the aperture actually is, rather than what it should be. What I mean is, if the camera’s computer calculates 1/350 @ f/6.3, then sends a message to the stop down to f/6.3, I would have thought f/6.3 gets recorded in the EXIF instead of there being a message sent back from the aperture mechanism saying it only stopped down to f/2.8, and was kept there. So what I expected to see is EXIF that says 1/350 @ f/6.3 with a picture that’s obvious overexposed. Apparently, my assumption was incorrect. I do know that with my Nikon D3, it will report the aperture as f/0 if there is any problem, so maybe these old compacts work in a similar way.