One concern we have had with the more recent compacts we have been using has been speed. They seem to be annoyingly slow both to take the pic (autofocus, exposure?) and to save it, even with fast flash cards.
If you want speed, then you want a real D-SLR. It's a world of difference. That said, my Panasonic LX-3 seems notably snappier than other compact cameras I've used. Still, on a good day it still takes maybe a second to get an autofocus lock. (I always, always do the half-press prefocus thing, so I can at least have some vague control over what's happening when I actually take the shot.)