The G11 is certainly an impressive P&S. The sample images at
http://www.usa.canon.com/consumer/controll...mpleimages=true look terrific for a P&S camera.
However, the G11 is a rather heavy and bulky P&S. The major flaw in my opinion is its slow continuous frame rate. Long shutter lags and slow frame rates have been the bane of P&S cameras since they first appeared.
I use Photoshop CS3 Extended for my image processing. A couple of exciting features of CS3 Extended, for me, is its ability to stack multiple shots of the same scene and create a composite using only the best pixels from each frame. This has the effect of reducing noise by 1 to 2 stops. The auto-alignment feature of CS3E seems good enough to take care of any slight movement between the hand-held shots of a burst of at least 3 frames per second. My 5D at 3 fps is able to use this feature without tripod.
However, I'd be very dubious about the 1 fps of the G11, hand-held, for either stacking purposes or merging to HDR. If you are carrying a lightweight camera for convenience purposes, it doesn't make much sense to also carry a tripod.
Interestingly, the latest announcement from Ricoh, describes a camera, the CX2, with a frame rate of 5 per second, at full resolution. That would be tremendously useful for me, although I appreciate the fact that probably most people who buy P&S cameras do not then go on to spend even more than their camera cost them, on software to process their images.
I guess one can't have everything. Compromises always have to be made. The maximum quality achievable with the G11, in ideal conditions at base ISO with moderate DR scenes, might well be better than the Ricoh CX2 can produce. Perhaps the Canon lens is better. Also the G11's RAW capability is an advantage for those seeking the maximum quality of which the camera is capable.