Lotsa choizes

Hmmm the high end of the advanced point-and-shoot/and/or/digital viewfinder camera market sits right around $500. Which is right where the lower-middle end of the dSLR market lives. Seems like every one I look at has something important missing. I really like the Sony dSLR's but the new low-end ones are bizarrely redisigned, uncomfortable and strange. They do have by far the best Live-View (on the display while you're shooting) mode of anybody, and their high end and older model units seem to work well.  By the time you get to a model that has everything I want it's called the A850 and costs $2000 for just the body. Drat. Gonna have to scale back the 'wants.'  The Nikon's and Canon's seem nice but aren't exactly a compelling value, especially since they build  their anti-shake and autofocus capability into their lenses, which makes them considerably more expensive.
One of the key advantages of the Pentax and Sony/Minolta units is that they do a good job of supporting their older lenses. Including anti-shake and most of the automatic modes (though obviously not autofocus, eh?) and especially Pentax has some older glass that's very well thought-of which now shows up on eBay for a tenth of what the current stuff goes for. Off to do more reading. Starting to look like Sony/Minolra or Pentax. We'll see.