I've had good luck with canon's for awhile. as far as megapixels go, you really don't need anything bigger than 5-6 unless you want to print your images very large. it's all a marketing scam...
If your looking for a digital SLR, I've had a few friends buy the Canon Rebel XTi...it's 10 megapix, compact/small/light and you can use tons of different lenses...not sure how much they cost these days, but I think you can find a kit for under 800, which is pretty decent.
check
www.bhphotovideo.com for tons of info/testimonials and basically any type of camera equipment you could ever want at a pretty good price.