If you are only going to view the photos on the monitor, 1280x960 should be fine.
As long as you are not planning on doing any cropping.
If you are planning on printing the photos, it is not enough pixels (even for high quality 4x6 prints).
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If I'm not going to be shooting pictures at resolutions above 1280x960 (which is already bigger than will fit on a 17in computer screen), does a high megapixel (5) count still add to quality, or are they essentially wasted?

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