Yep it was hard to buy it... but the positive thing is that I will go on using it for many years.. my previous one, an Olympus C-3000 3.3 MP served me for a LONG time
MP basically let you know how many pixels the camera can "create". it's basically heightxwidth. a 3.3 MP can go up to 2048 pixels wide pictures. And as said an 8 MP shoot at 3200+ this also mean less zoom needed in some cases because the pic is bigger and you can crop out the needed part for instance.
There is no "min MP" concept, but to buy a 3 MP or less when the max is around 8 for amateurish cameras is like buying say a 1.5 GHZ processor when 3 GHZ+ are around. It's always better to spend some more and have something "better" that will still be good after a longer period of time
