Therre are so many numbers and variables associated with buying a digital camera, so my help to you now is to eliminate one of these numbers from your decision-making process.
IGNORE "DIGITAL ZOOM."
To me, digital zoom is a worthless feature, so whether a camera has a lot or a little of it makes no difference to me.
"Optical zoom" means zoom that is accomplished by the optics, the lens, the glass. This is a pure zoom, a pure enlargement. "Digital zoom" means electronically zooming in on a portion of the image. Want to simulate digital zoom without using a digital camera? Turn on your TV. Focus your eyes on one portion of the screen. Now, get closer and closer to your TV. Notice as you get closer to the screen how the image looks fuzzier and fuzzier, and eventually how you can see the dots (called "pixels")? That's all that digital zoom is. Worthless.
As far as optical zoom goes, there is a trade-off that you have to decide. The bigger the number of the zoom, the bigger the lens. If you want a small, point-and-shoot camera that you can fit (or s-q-u-e-e-z-e) into your pocket, you can't get an optical zoom higher than about 4x. This isn't a matter of technology, it's a matter of the laws of physics. Cameras with a higher zoom are larger, to accommodate the larger lens. More zoom means more control. It's not just a matter of zooming in on something far away, it can be a matter of taking a picture of something xlose but by zooming in you can eliminate a lot of other non-picturesque things or distractions that would have been in the picture if you used a smaller zoom. But then the other trade-off is the more zoom you use the more light you need ... stop me before I keep going and going ....
Otherwise, without being too complicated, don't feel you have to buy anything higher than 5 megapixels (you can even go lower) unless you think you'll be doing BIG enlargements or will be cropping and then enlarging just that cropped image.
GOOD LUCK!
