A friend who sells reprographic equipment assures me, that with a standard 6" x 4" print, with a digital image the human eye cannnot detect a difference in image quality at anything over 600 pixel width. Having looked at a few of my photobucket images (640 x 480 pixels) on another site and compared them to the 5.2mp originals downloaded to my PC, I tend to agree.
Mp size is very much the marketing tool at the mo', but unless you want to blow things up to poster size, or look at things on a print in very close detail (scale patterns for instance), I think it's a bit of a con. The main features to me are size of screen, optical zoom and quality optics, rather than mucho megapixels.
I'm in the market for an upgrade, don't want an SLR and am looking at the Panasonic Lumix, 3" Screen,10x Optical Zoom (you don't need digital zoom if you have photo-editing software imho) and proper Leica Lenses. Down to about ?200 on the net now, anybody tried one?
Cheers, Jack