After weighing several options, I ended up purchasing a Nikon D3000. It has 10.2 megapixels and came out in 2009. I went this route because I figured if I was going to be sinking money in a camera, I might as well sink money in one that was nice and could serve me beyond the class. I was also on slight budgetary restraints - absolutely no more than $500, and even then I tried to stay on the lower end. My D3000 ended up costing me about $400 (excluding shipping) and struck an okay balance my budget and my wanting of a new camera.
There is one feature I sacrificed in order to stay in budget: live view. That is what every point-and-shoot comes with, because most of them don't have viewfinders anymore. It's when you use the screen of your camera to frame your image, rather than using a viewfinder like we did on film cameras. Surprisingly, live view is a fairly recent addition to DSLRs, particularly entry-level ones. Instead, the screen is used to show you what settings you're shooting at (ISO, aperture value, shutter speed, etc.). Now don't worry too much - you can still look at all the pictures you've taken on your camera.
As it turns out, I didn't miss live view much, if it all. While it can take a bit of getting used to, especially if you've been using screens to frame your shots for the past few years, it's a skill that gets adopted pretty quick. Use a DSLR enough and it'll feel weird to go back to your point-and-shoot and not have a viewfinder.
Live view is handy if you're going to be taking a lot of shots from awkward angles. Some of mine were taken on blind faith, on the hopeful assumption that I understood my camera enough to know what exactly the lens was looking at. While it would've been nice to have the screen to look at rather than craning my neck to look into the viewfinder, it wasn't a problem in the long run.
I'm not trying to deter you from buying anything more expensive - heck, get the nicer cameras if you can! Nikons currently follow the pattern of being named "Nikon D[number]", from the D3000 to the D3X. Canons tend to be EOS, Rebel, or random number/letter combinations.
