1:45 PM -- A picture is worth 1.0 thousand words.

This weekend I found that most consumer electronics stores no longer sell any digital camera under 3 megapixels, unless it's built into a cell phone. A comparably feature-heavy camera, like a Samsung Digimax, at 3.2 megapixel, runs about $230.

Then I found this photo in the PR archives:

So in just about nine years, digital picture quality has improved by 3.2 times -- at the low end -- and the price has dropped by 75 percent.

Happy New Year, indeed.

— Phil Harvey, Photo Phun Phakts Editor, Light Reading