To add a few more things, and embellish a bit on what was mentioned above:
1. What is it you want/need to photograph? While a DSLR has superior capabilities in a wider range of photographic subjects and styles, a nice P&S camera is nearly as capable in a few key areas that most people tend to use their cameras for. Landscapes? Daytime vacation shots? Scenics? Slow-shutter night shots? A P&S can do as well as a DSLR for most people. You can make large prints, sell photos, even get published, using a P&S for these types of shots. If this is where you intend to be taking photos...strongly consider whether you want or need the extra weight, price, size, and maintenance of a DSLR. There are P&S cameras with larger sensors, good lenses, and even manual controls, that will still be a lot lighter and smaller than a DSLR, and much less expensive, and may really be all you need. Plus...as WillCAD mentioned above, you can still grow your photography a very long way by learning more about technique, composition, and timing - learning to control exposure, depth of field, focus, color and light, composition, and motion.
2. If you decide a DSLR is still the route you want to go...then ergonomics becomes a big factor. It's a much larger and heavier machine, so make sure it is comfortable to hold, to shoot with, and to carry. The grip design must be comfortable for your hand, in carrying and shooting. The buttons should be within finger reach. As for which one to buy...don't worry about it. You can't buy a bad DSLR nowadays. Don't let ANY salesman or other shooter tell you otherwise - big-name brands are often hard-sold at stores and other brands may be discouraged...or someone that shoots with one brand will tell you it's the end-all-be-all. Block all of that out, check out the cameras in person, find out which is comfortable, has the right features, and the right price...and simply ignore the brand name on front. Only folks who need particular professional grade lenses, or have been shooting already with one brand and have a collection of lenses, need to worry about the brand they are buying. Pentax, Olympus, Sony, Canon, Nikon, Panasonic...you'll be fine.
3. When perusing complaints on a particular brand - use this information to understand what features people are mentioning, and what problems they are having - but always remember: EVERY camera brand will have people with complaints...and message boards are always filled with two kinds of people - those who love a camera, and those who hate it. Just think about the entire concept of a camera message board - a place where you take time out of your day to come to a place where you sit and type comments and read comments about a brand of camera. What possibly could drive a person to want to spend that time? It isn't likely to be the average Joe who fairly well enjoys his camera and has had no real issues. It's going to be folks with enough strong passion to drive them to devote time to the subject - and the folks with the most passion are fanatics/people in love, and people who hate or feel jilted. So don't get caught up reading negatives about one brand, and not check another brand or assume there are not folks with problems over there too...there are!
You also may want to consider checking out a dedicated photography message board which has a posting board for photos..go take some photos that you think are pretty good, and stick them up for critique...make sure to let them know you're looking for straight-up honesty. Other photography enthusiasts should give you pretty good critique and you'll quickly find out what you're doing wrong or right. Ignore the 'great photo' posts or the 'photo sucks' posts...they always pop up. And thicken your skin first - you may feel insulted by some critique, especially if you thought it was pretty good. But take all advice, try to look at your photo as an outsider, and you'll be surprised how much your photography will improve, and how much room you have to grow even with a compact P&S. This is the route I took years ago - I had SLRs since 1978, but was never more of a snapshooter - no skill or understanding of photography. In 2003, I had a decent P&S camera, and thought I was doing pretty well with it, so I started putting up a few photos to a photography critique board. Besides learning for the first time what Aperture, Shutter, and ISO actually meant and how they worked, I also learned a whole bevvy of things I had never heard of before or noticed in my shots: unlevel horizons, CA, PF, blown highlights, crushed shadows, rule of thirds, flare, flat photos, depth of field, white balance, barrel distortion, pincushion, histogram, bell curve, shadow noise, chroma noise, luminance noise...the list just went on and on. I came away feeling like I was the worst photographer in the world, if all of these things could be going on in my photos, and I didn't see them or even know what they were! But over the year or two I had that camera, I learned what all those things were, learned to control them, or use them creatively. I learned how the various controls of the camera worked to adjust these things, and started composing shots with all of that in mind. By the time I moved up to another advanced P&S camera, I found myself offering the same type of advice to other new posters...and realized I had learned this stuff. My photography had improved, and though you can never avoid all those things I mentioned, you can understand how and why they occur, and either avoid, minimize, or use those things in your photography. I spent another 2 years on top of the first 3 years shooting with P&S cameras - helping others follow the same learning path I took, and beginning to sell photos and get published photos and photography jobs, before I truly felt the need to move up to a DSLR.
Hope that helps a bit!
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you did the right thing read and try to understand what you read ask questions no shame in that when and if you decide to buy a dslr their are plenty of sites out their to let you shop different cameras side by side.cameras are like computers when you buy it two weeks later it will be obsolete 
never fails.I'm second guessing my purchase.I will learn to use this and then think of upgrading.I just want to take good pictures not trying for pro status 
This is exactly what I needed!
