DSLR'S, very disappointed

My background is Olympus PenFT system, Olympus OM2n system, Olympus XA,
CanonA4o, Nikon4500, PanasonicFZ15, so I have no bias. I had never seen
DSLR's in the flesh, but when today the OlympusE1 came up for sale at a
knockdown price, I thought it time to consider a DSLR.
I went to look at the E1, but was appalled by it's bulk. A fallback was
the Olympus E3oo (I have OM prime lenses). This was the ugliest camera
I have ever seen, though I'm a believer in 'form follows function',
this was gross, no wonder the price is tumbling! And the touted
'compact Zuiko lenses designed for DSLR' looked the same size as all
the others to me. The Minolta was enormous. D70 still large.
This left 2 reasonable cameras, Canon D350, and Pentax *istDS. The
Canon looks cheap, but otherwise ok, except new on the market and
costing twice the price of the E1!....definitely poor value just now.
Pentax was quite appealing, but reports say you must shoot in RAW to
get good images, and the files take 9 seconds to write....oh dear!
When I got home, I looked at my beautiful OM2n, and wondered what the
hell has gone wrong. Guess I'll wait for the digital designers to catch
up......
DonB