Why would anyone need a 10mp point-and-shoot digital camera?

I have a 4mp digi cam and the pics from those are big enough as it is. I never take it at the max resolution either cuz I always end up resizing anyways.

Is it practical to spend the extra money to get a 10mp point-and-shoot ? Of course if you're buying an SLR and you're pro/semi-pro, I understand why you would want the 10mp but other then that, is it useful?

With your 4MP, there's no need to upgrade unless it's a really cheap camera, with a crappy sensor. If it's a Cannon, Fuji, Nikon, Olympus, etc., you should be fine.

With 4MP you can print incredible 8x10 photos and very nice 11x14's with no problems. The average Joe won't usually use prints larger than that due to their high cost and won't been submitting photos for print in a magazine. (which print in 72 up to 300dpi)

What Dr_Sam mentioned is if you take a 5MP photo and crop 30% of the image, the image will become smaller. If you resize/resample the image back to 5MP demensions, it won't look as nice because there are less pixels in this image. This is not a problem for 4x6 and 5x7 prints, but will cause "Soft" or "grainy" 8.x10s.

Also, don't be fooled. The "Pro" cameras like the Nikon D70 & D100, or the Cannon 10D & 20, and even the Mark II are ONLY 6-8MP. So don't think that dSLR's have zillions of pixels cause they just don't. If you always plan to compose your pictures perfectly, you don't need 10 MP. If you want to allow for cropping, which means enlarging only a portion of your image, the more pixels the better.