You have to decide what YOU want out of your new camera. What are you going to use it for most? outdoors under bright light? portraits? low-light? random snapshots of people? travel? Decide what qualities you want. Its all very well getting a DSLR for the image qaulity, but if its too big to carry with you every time you go out - you may end up missing those magic photo opportunities. Do you want a movie mode? If so at what qaulity? HD? VGA? Do you have an HD TV with DVI?? Most DSLRs wont do movies (Nikon D90 excepted). Do you want/know how to use full manual modes? shutter or aperture priorities? What sort of budget are you looking at? How wide and how much zoom are you really going to use? Lens speed for low-light performance?? What matters most?
Think about what you want from it, how you will use it most, and why you want it. And let that decide what form of camera you want, then get the best one of that form. More mega pixels does not equal better image. In fact the more pixels you pack into a sensor the bigger the signal-to-noise ratio, and often a camera with less pixels provides better image quality and per-pixel-sharpness and less noise - Cannon EOS 40D vs EOS 50D come to mind here (one has 50% more pixels but worse image quality).
Do you your homework -
www.dpreview.com is THE site for this.
Personally, i wanted something small and pocketable, with good image qaulity, a 28-100mm (in 35mm parlance), HD video capability, good low-light performance, good build quality etc. I choose the Panasonic Fx37 which Leica re-badge and sell as their C-LUX 3. For better images with full manual control, where portability isnt an issue, i have a good SLR anyway.
If you want the best pocket camera on the market with manual control, the best lens (for a pocketable camera), the best low-light performance with a massive 25mm wide-angle, with HD video and dont mind not having much of a zoom then the panasonic Lx3 is the best camera out there. If HD video is not on your shopping list for a pocketable camera the Fujifilm F100 is the best out there. For a bigger non-SLR camera, i would go with a cannon G10 - brilliant everything, no HD video tho.
For an entry-level DSLR, personally i think the cannon EOS 450, or if you have some more cash, an alpha A700 or EOS 40D, or a nikkon D300 are all very nice. If price is no object, then IMO the Sony Alpha A900 with a Zeiss lens is THE ticket!!!
