Compact point and shoot cameras are basically interchangeable

I was talking with a friend who is in the market for a new P&S camera and this came up..

She wanted a new compact P&S camera and isn't trying to be a hardcore professional photographer. Eventually, after we talked about it and looked at the huge number of different almost-similar P&S cameras, I pointed out that none of them is going to be mindblowingly better than her old camera.

Then, I explained that if you look at all of the cameras in Canon's SD series presently on sale, except for different lens attributes and maybe one or two real features, the pictures you will get are within epsilon (meaning, an infentessimal amount) of each other. It doesn't matter that much if it's 8, 10, 12, 14, or more megapixels. It probably doesn't matter if it's got a DIGIC 3 or DIGIC 4 processor.

They will all end up taking decent pictures at commonly printed sizes, will take mediocre pictures in dark clubs, and fit in the pocket.

It does matter if it has image stabilization, but they all do these days. And none of the SD-series cameras seem to have manual features. Mostly, they have slightly different lenses or LCD screens or slightly different numbers of megapixels. And there might be some cameras of the last generation working their way out the sales channel.

You might find a long telephoto lens somewhat useful, but I tend to think that they are overrated. Wider angle lenses, which are starting to get popular, are far more useful for the average not-trying-to-be-a-pro situation. HDTV video is also kind of nice.

I've also found that most folks don't read deep into the manual about how to adequately use their camera and they probably don't care to, either.

I tried to get her interested in getting the LX3, given that it's almost as tiny but actually has a chance of taking better pictures once you figure it out, but that's a huge jump in price. The same goes for the G10 or even the Micro 4/3rds cameras.

I've been going through my archives lately. I've got a LOT of stuff that I kinda scanned or downloaded off the card that I haven't gone through. Some real gems there, actually...