In reply to The Lemming:
> Unless you are prepared to dedicate months/years of learning how to use a dSLR then you are better investing time and money into a quality compact or prosumer camera.
When I used my old Olympus SLRs, I only had at most 36 frames to use (okay, I could take spare films...). I had a decent viewfinder that let me compose properly. So I took my time and some care in choosing scene, selecting appropriate control settings, etc, and held the camera nice and still, or used a tripod. The pictures I took were nice and crisp, and some were pretty good.
Then I bought a compact digital, and, since you can merrily snap away easily with loads of space on a memory card, I took no time to compose or think about the shots. Result: a load of crap 'snaps'.
The message of this isn't to buy a DSLR, but to take time and care thinking about what to photograph and how, whatever camera you use. I still need to do this, as I haven't yet overcome the 'point and shoot' laziness with digital cameras.
From an imaging technology point of view, I'd agree with the other comments that more MP isn't necessarily a good thing. Given a fixed sensor size, the more MP you have, the smaller each pixel sensor is, and the more space on the sensor used for non-imaging function (e.g. electrical connections and data transfer). So, rather than the signal from the pixel being dominated by the light input, the ratio of background electrical noise rises, and the picture becomes noisy, fuzzy, indistinct, etc. especially so in lower light levels. The nearest equivalent effect in film photography is, strangely, the use of a faster film, e.g. 1600ASA, where the
large grains become prominent, and have a visual effect similar to this noise.