So I got suckered into buying a 8000, after being wowed by my S602Z, a 3.2 megapixel, 6X zoom. If you want to take pictures at dusk or early dawn, this camera will give you absolute junk for pictures. My S602Z takes much clearer pictures than it does.
Also, if you have to take pictures inside even with good lighting (I was taking pictures behind the professional photographer, who had set up those umrella reflectors and lights, and I got pictures that looked like I was using the $90 digital camera I bought my Nieces for Christmas.
I still don't know what it will do in full daylight, but the noise on this thing absolutely sucks. I would have said buy a Fuji FinePix before I threw my money away on this thing. I might be good for a monoculor, though! I've gone though the manual trying every setting I could to do things like limit the ISO and up the exposure, but I only get dark, very noisy (i.e. uneditable) pictures from this camera in any kind of semi-low light.
My suggestion is to take your laptop along and take pictures, then put them on your laptop to see how they REALLY look - but make sure you get something other than that sorry picture reader M$ has. Gimp is an excellent choice and it is free, in addition to being an excellent graphics editor.