Ok, TRUST ME on this one. If you can find a good camera with lower, yes lower megapixels that still offers a good zoom and close focusing distance than get it.
the reason i say lower MP and you think i'm crazy is becuase the size of the sensors in point-n'-shoot'ers are about the size of a small pinky fingernail. That means that if you got 8MP packed in there, you're going to get alot of heat and therefore you'll get images that are noisy as all {snipped} and coupled with the crappy lenses in all P&S cameras (for the exception of very few) you'll get horrible images that start to break up at anything larger than about a 5x7 print.
I'm not telling you to go out and buy an SLR (35mm or digital), but don't look at megapixels when you lok for cameras beucase that's the least of your worries. Lens quality and.....
oh forget it. I'm not fooling anyone with this. these are for junky myspace pics.
Just get the cheapest thing you can find beucase it won't matter. you'll still get junk images.