Confused between Nikon P7000 and Olympus E-PL1?

Hi All,

I am thinking of purchasing a camera around $300....

I am pretty confused between Nikon P7000 and Olympus E-PL1 ...both are almost at same price (in Amazon.com)...I am a beginner and quite in interested in photography...Please suggest a best one among the above??

I observe that there are all features in P7000...lots of manual controls..so many dials...all are good and pretty easy to access..nice screen+view finder...on the other hand..PL1 got a bigger sensor and I also observe that picture quality is lot better than P7000 at all ISO...but it don't have many control dials and screen is just ok...the other thing that is bothering me about PL1 is the auto-focus issues...so many are complaining about it...is it that bad??Also, how can you compare the auto-focus among the two??

Please Suggest....

Many thanks in advance.