Agreed. The megapixel race has to stop at some point due to the increase noise and file sizes. At some point, it's all just about marketing. I like how Nikon has slowed this race with their D90 D300 D700 line. (kept it at a reasonable 12.3MP) Canon keeps bumping up the pixel race which kinda ticks the guys at Dpreview off. Eg. G10 (14mp), 50D (15mp), 5D II (21mp) :D Panasonic has "kinda" bucked the MP trend by releasing the LX3 with a larger sensor but still a pretty high 10MP sensor.
I went the SLR route since too many pixel on a tiny sensors (on point & shoots) make them quite bad for low light shots. (noise) 200ISO on a point and shoot looks like 1600ISO on an SLR. If they kept MP sizes the same, but improved low light performance & dynamic range, that would be awesome. High MP are only if you're printing posters and do a lot of cropping. These larger file sizes just eat up HDD space, take longer to transfer, and slow browsing/post processing.
