The new 18-200 VR DX lens already takes into account the 1.5 crop factor. It's a DX lens.

What you describe won't happen any time soon. Just look at digital camera development, deployment and marketing over the past 10 years. The camera you describe isn't something widely required/desired by the mass-market anyway. And for a Pro, buying a D2X at current prices is a no brainer already.

Likely more important, look at glass/lens development and marketing over the past 10-20 years. Nikon is in the business of making money, not giving away freebies. Good glass has not dropped through the floor in price.

And yes, the lenses on Nikon's compact 8000 series (such as the E5700 I have) are phenomenal for their size. But they're no 17-55 2.8.

Moore's law has already slowed in CPUs, and I don't think it's generally applied to Digital cameras anyway - not in terms of MP count anyway. Consumers are generally looking for larger sensors, both for both better light distribution and to take better advantage of existing lenses. When it all boils down you still have to get light to the sensor. Bigger lens = more light. You're not going to see a micro-lens on a cell phone rival a a super-high-quality f1.2 135 format any time soon. It's likely you'll never see any such thing. At least not made of glass.

Anyway, if I were Nikon I'd be worrying about margins. The consumer, amateur and pro product model seems like a good one to keep moving forward. The models available to consumers today are a lot better than the film cameras available to the same segment in the past 20 years.

If they could squeeze better quality into a much smaller package they'd be doing it. They'd also be squeezing higher quality into today's larger models. But it's expensive to make the high quality sensors and the technology just isn't there. Smaller = hotter = less available light = noisier. Smaller diameter lens equals less light as well, which also reduces your focal distance unless you want an ultra-slow lens. Compensate with the smaller sensor and you're stuck again with noise/crappy images.

The 8800 is a decent balance, but it's still using the same ultra-garbage Sony 8MP sensor its predecessor used, isn't it? The 8700 was atrocious as was every other 8MP compact body using the same sensor (Sony, Canon, Minolta, etc..) None of them were worth giving up the E5700 for. The 8800 was "close" but I could hear the call of the SLR. You see, I for one would prefer an SLR to an SLRish compact. That wasn't the case when I originally picked up the 5700, but now a D200 with a pocket-size Canon SD550 would be an ideal match. You don't have to limit yourself to one camera. I only know one person who wears the same clothes for example, Steve Jobs, but even he agrees there should be more than one model/form factor of Mac.

Bruno