FZ10 and ZOOM..... (1 Viewer)

I want to 'upgrade' if that's the word, my old Olympus 2100uz.
The FZ10 looks ideal for my purposes (birds / wildlife etc)...


How would it compare with its 4 meg resolution to something like the 7 or 8 times zoom and 8 megapixel cameras that are now on the market ?

Would a crop from the centre of an 8 meg camera at 7 times zoom be equal to a full FZ10 pic at 12x zoom ???

I'd have thought a higher megapixel camera will need to have image stabilisation to be a realistic rival to the FZ10 for handheld tele photography pushed towards limits; more pixels won't compensate for camera shake. With a tele converter, the FZ-10's image stabilised 600mm to 700mm 35mm equivalent with 4MP is probably as good as it gets at the moment short of a DSLR with a very costly stabilised lens.
If you were wondering whether the higher megapixel cameras with shorter zooms give you more pixels for a small distant object, then this article (mentioned previously on Panasonic forum on dpreview) suggests a way that figures for pixel resolution and maximum focal length for a digicam can be combined to give a guide :
http://www.digicamhistory.com/Figure of Merit.html