Digital Cameras and Megapixels

Why can't you get a good name-brand 3-4MP camera for cheap? I don't need 7, 8, 10MP or more. I just want a small camera that's 3MP or so, 3x optical zoom ("digital zoom" is not zoom) for $50-$70 or so. I used to have a little 2MP Minolta DiMAGE X20 that was awesome but it finally went nuts after serving me well for a few years. I have a newer Panasonic that I actually like but it's a little to big to carry around in a pocket (unless I get some really BIG baggy pants.)



I think the camera people are in cahoots with the flash memory people and the hard drive people. They just want us to use more and more and more memory to store everything. It's just not necessary to have 10MP for making a 4x6 print or taking a snappy for the blog. And yeah you can set a more expensive 10MP camera to take 4MP pics but you've still got to pay for the 10MP price tag. I guess maybe there's a technical reason and perhaps they don't make the lower MP electronics any more... all the new sensors are probably the higher resolution ones. Hmmmph.