Think before buying a DSLR!

Recently one of my friend asked my opinion on buying a DSLR and like many others, he looked confused. Some 7 years back I was in the same fix however I did some research and went for a high-end point & shoot after considering the below points:

1. Necessity: First & foremost - identify the necessity. Why do you need it? If it's simple usage like taking some family snaps, random outings, family events and getting that straight into Social networking sites, a compact Point & Shoot is more than enough. 
2. Time: DSLRs are complex gadgets and you need to spend a lot of time to learn it. There are thousands of intricate things from settings to composition and if you do give that time to learn, you are not going to get what you actually want. Are you ready to spend time to learn the gadget? On the contrary, point & shoot comes with preset modes and you can directly click you way with some basic options. Saves tons of time.
3. Patience: Do you have enough patience? If not, simply go for point & shoots. DSLRs are complicated and you need to have a lot of patience to learn the mechanism even for a simple picture.
4. Spend: One of the greatest advantages of DSLR is the interchangeable lenses. On the contrary, this is a bane in itself because the lenses are extremely expensive. We do not a lens which is typically like a "fits-all" and hence you need to have different lens suiting different occasions. Lens are costly propositions and it ranges anywhere between 6k to 200k, based on the requirement. Not only the lens, as and when you grow, you need to keep spending (read: investing!) on equipment & accessories like flashguns, tripods, monopods, filters, extenders, bags etc. If you put all of them together, DSLR is a very costly proposition
5. Control: Do you want the control over the images you take or do you want he camera to do it automatically? if your answer is "I don't care!", go for a P&S.

Here's my quick tip for a starter: First buy a P&S and learn the nuances of photography. Once you think you are comfortable and you genuinely see your interest going, go for a DSLR.

Today DSLRs are fancy gadgets to have and literally everybody have it especially with low rates, but unfortunately I have seen so many cameras slipping into a deep slumber and eventually getting featured in online and mobile classifieds portal.
There may be thousand other technically oriented or feature based points as well, but above points are something which is very simple and preliminary which one may like to consider.

My $0.20!