I have no right to respond here, but I agree with this. Middle ground is seldom the right answer, for anything. You rarely get the benefits of both ends, but, rather, the drawbacks of both ends. In this case, I'd tend to agree that you get the lack of portability with the lack of high-quality imaging and the lack of flexibility.

I will point out that Doug's camera did likely cost far less than a DSLR would have.