Advanced Point & Shoot or Nikon D40?

If you have the money and don't mind the bulk, get the D40. Even if you never change the lens in your life or never use any of the manual features you'll find that your pictures come out better with the D40. The D40 has a sensor that is 15x larger than a point-and-shoot sensor. This results in pictures that are rich in colour and are rarely grainy. The D40 also has very low shutter lag so the picture will take pretty much as soon as you press the button. This is not to say you can't take good pictures with a point-and-shoot, it's just a little harder to.

What do you want? P&S cameras are basically programed, automatic camera's, leaving little control to the user. DSLR's (D40) are fully adjustable cameras, but can be shot automatically until the user become aquainted with their controls. There are two huge pluses on the side of the DSLR's, 1) their sensors are over15 times larger that a P&S camera, so have higher resolution and 2) can use lenses from fisheye to extreme telephoto

You can purchase a D40 for basically the same price as the Olympus SP-570UZ.as you can see here: http://www.amazon.com/Nikon-Digital-18-55mm-3-5-5-6G-Zoom-Nikkor/dp/B000KJQ1DG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1225829035&sr=8-1 http://www.amazon.com/Olympus-SP-570UZ-Digital-Optical-Stabilized/dp/B0011E67VA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1225829122&sr=8-1. There is no good reason not to get the D40.