There's a reasonable simple solution to the issue of images lost from media cards. DON'T LEAVE THEM ON THE CARD!!! Download your pictures to your computer every day and reformat the card as soon as you're sure the images have downloaded successfully. Also, if the images are family memories, back them up to a second location, such as an external hard drive.
I have 8Gb memory cards in my cameras, capable of holding 560 images when I'm shooting in the camera's RAW format and well over 1000 if I were to shoot in high JPEG. No matter how much of the card is filled, I still download to my computer at the end of the shooting day.
"But I don't want to take a computer on vacation." Netbook computers and tablets are so small these days, there isn't really any argument for not having one available. Also, there are compact external hard drives that will easily interface with netbook computers.
I understand about not downloading because of computer issues. I've had my share of those myself. It is possible to remove the media card from the camera and set it aside until it's possible to download. It's always a good idea to have more than one media card as it is...