Dana,
if you look at it from a different viewpoint it could be another one of those thousands of "which one should I get" threads, where each reply is like "this model works for me so get it" etc.
But to be realistic, you need to ask some basic questions.
Why Nikon? It might be the "reputation", or the perceived final product quality, etc. But you have to think in terms of the sustainability of your tools: viability in tems of expansion and repair, how well you can use it as a tool, etc.
Then you have to make sure you can stick to your requirements: very often you get something that suits your requirements and them a week later you say, "wouldn't it be nice if it had that function?" and you're back to square one. I see this every other day, and it can get very frustrating too.
My advice (after several false starts)...
Get the camera with the minimal feature you can live with, which is sustainable. In that sense it seems like a FE or FE2 would be quite sufficient. There are differences between these two models, and operation-wise I actually prefer the FE. But of course keep an open mind, YMMV.
