So this probably isn't going to help, but I have a compact, megazoom and dSLR camera. I use them all for completely different things and none does everything I want (thus 3 cameras).

FWIW two of the three (the compact and megazoom) are Panasonic's (Lumix) and I love them. The compact especially is one of the best I've ever had of that kind. It takes amazing photos and works very well in both bright and low light (amazingly well in low light, actually, hardly any grain with very minimal light) and also wicked fast for outdoor action shots. It's the best camera of the three in those two conditions. It has an excellent mix of pre-sets with a pretty wide range of options for manually setting things (especially for what's basically a point-and-shoot camera).

The other Lumix is my megazoom which works exactly as advertised and takes fantastic zoom photos, with almost no image degradation even at maximum zoom. It's shit in low light or indoors, though. Since that's not what I bought it for, it's not really an issue.

i've had several canons and i think they generally make great cameras. i'm not so crazy about the small ones though. i've had two of them because i liked the idea of how small they are. what i didn't like about them is how fast the battery pack wears out before needing recharging. as a result i'm back to a larger canon that takes regular batteries instead of the specialized battery pack. i like to be able to travel and not worry about the battery pack wearing out.