I have an A700 and my opinion is that what you have is typical of point and shoot quality, in fact probably better than average. When you look at full size it is easy to forget that the print is several feet across. If you want no noise at that magnification there are medium format scanning backs available. I have found the camera reviews at www.dpreview.com
very helpful for comparing image quality in the different camera classes. I think Canon does a really good job with the tiny sensors in the Powershot cameras. There you can compare the A700 with Canon pro series large sensor cameras. The difference in noise levels is significant. Could you be expecting too much from inexpensive P&S technology?
