The way digital cameras seem to be made in the $600 and below range are...
You can either have good zoom and low megapixels, or high megapixels and poor zoom. As of late they have been stepping it up, but when I bought mine last year, it sucked. The Kodak DX series have 10x+optical, I can zoom half way across the lake and the megapixels are in the 4-6 range, which is sufficient.