The real joy of the camera comes at the end of the day, when a slide show of the day's pictures is just a few minutes away. The weak link in the chain remains printing. The current ink-jet photo printers are remarkably good, considering their cost, though they are slow. As long as you are a couple of feet away from the prints, they are generally indistinguishable from silver halide prints. The photo paper and the ink cartridges are expensive, however, so if you print most of your pictures, the costs are higher than for normal photo finishing, and it is a lot more trouble.
Software has a long way to go.
Software bundled with cameras is generally inadequate. Computer reliability and backups become serious issues once you're storing on your computer not only your work and your writing but also all your pictures. Losing pictures of your children because your disk crashed is unacceptable. Once faster Internet connections are more widely available, automated off-site backups will help a great deal. Digital photography is still very much a hobby.