> Lastly, from a technical perspective, sensors and lenses > on cheaper cameras are pretty good these days, and > generally when you shooting you don't want

> Lastly, from a technical perspective, sensors and lenses > on cheaper cameras are pretty good these days, and > generally when you shooting you don't want full manual. True, but focus speed and low-light performance are still very lacking compared to SLRs. And I'd say these two are quite important for family stuff: just try to take photo of playing kids with camera which is slow to focus or has substantial shutter lag. Not all family dinners are brightly lit either.