Some time ago, I bought an Nikon's D40 (now out of production, but still available refurbished). It has enough features to allow me all the expressive power of which I am currently capable. That is, I don't know for sure why I would want a "better" (more expensive) one.
A few months after my purchase, I was discussing a couple of photographs with another amateur photographer. In the midst of the discussion, he asked me nonchalantly, "So, how many megapixels does your camera have?"
I couldn't tell him.
It's not that I don't have a head for numbers. And it's not that I didn't do any research. No, the matter of megapixel count simply was not something that entered into the question of which camera to buy. Mostly because, even at large 8 1/2"x11" prints (like the kind I have hanging on my wall right now), it is nigh impossible to make out any graininess, even with pictures taken on my old Canon PowerShot (rocking a hefty 2.0 megapixels).
Another reason that megapixel counts are misleading is that the higher numbers don't (usually) mean bigger sensors. For example, "doubling" the megapixel count will actually do nothing more than shrink the size of each pixel, all other things being equal. And shrinking those pixels lessens their sensitivity to light, and therefore increases noise.
So if you're looking for a camera with expressive power, there are more important things than megapixels. Two of the biggies are ease of use and lens selection (if you're getting an SLR).
Funnily enough, megapixel counts seem to be a big part of how camera manufacturers differentiate between their models. Maybe that's because it's a number, and an easy one to increase between revisions. One thing's for sure: in the digital world, what's marketed isn't necessarily what's important.
Maybe that's true in other areas as well.
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