My first digital camera (9 years ago) was a Sony Mavica. It had its deficiencies, but it had superb performance in dim light, far better than any other camera I've seen, including my DSLR.
I beg to differ.
Nine years ago sensor technology by today's standards was not just primitive, it was prehistoric. The one area where the most advances have been made, other than resolution ,is low light noise, or high ISO noise. Today's cameras even compact ones are worlds better than those from back then.
Secondly, a modern compact digital camera in terms of image quality may be able to hold its own against a DSLR at most upto ISO 400 and at high shutter speeds. After that the fall is steep. Modern dslrs on the other hand like the Canon EOS 10d or later models look remarkably clean even at ISO 1600. The reason is DSLRs have larger pixels on their large sensors which produce cleaner images than the small sensor compacts. Olympus dslrs are a little worse than Canon's or Nikon's because their (4/3) sensors are smaller than the standard APS size.