If you want hard copies of your photos, you can print them with your own color printer or have this done at a photolab. Not having to worry about wasting film, adds some carefree fun back to photo taking and reduces the pressure to take a great picture each time. Of course, the best part is that you can preview your pictures immediately and know if they worked out or need to be shot again. Megapixel is an industry term refering to models with more than a million pixels which results in an image size of 1024x728 and better. This is enough to produce a high quality 5x7 hard copy.
Prices continue to drop.
Now 2 megapixel cameras are in the mid to high end consumer range and megapixel models are cheap. This is good for consumers. The resolution of 1024x728 or better is significantly more than is needed for posting pictures to a web page. You can also transfer directly from the camera to the PC and thanks to widespread use of USB instead of serial connections in new models , this is now a fast method of upload. Pay attention to the type of memory card used to store the camera's images.