I got a 2.1 megapixel Nikon a couple years ago. It was really expensive then, but it's pretty reasonable now. About the same price as a point and shoot film camera.

The thing that I think makes a digital camera wonderful is that once you pay for the camera, the memory card, the rechargable batteries, and the battery charger, the pictures are FREE. With my old film camera, I was always thinking about the price of the film and the processing for all the pictures I took. I took far fewer pictures than I take now. I would shoot maybe 5-6 rolls of film a year, at a cost of something like a dollar a print. With the digital camera, each picture is completely free. I have taken thousands of pictures each year with the digital camera and as a result have taken many more good pictures.

Yes, it's true that if I want to look at my pictures, I have to turn on my computer, but I can always put a picture on a floppy disk and take it to almost any photo lab to be printed. The 2.1 megapixel cameras will give you a 4x6 print at 300 dpi, which is photo quality. Using Photoshop, or most other programs, you can enlarge that to 8x10 if you want, and the image will still be pretty sharp. While not as sharp as a good 35mm film camera, you still won't notice with prints smaller than the 8x10 size.

Each camera type has it's strengths. I do miss the feel of my old manual Nikon film camera, but there is no denying for me anyway that I'm taking A LOT more pictures with the digital camera than I ever took with my film camera.