I'm with ap4a, I think both can be equally important.
Although it's obviously all about what you do with your kit, not what it actually is, that's important in the end, from a technological point of view it can be really interesting to see the new developments that are being made every day in camera equipment and how we can use these to help our creativity.
That said, it's easy to get too involved with the technical details and forget to just get out there with what you have and shoot what you see. I'm obviously in the fortunate position at the moment to be able to test out various bits of kit, and I do think about the equipment people have used in shots I see (in a, what will I need to recreate that kind of shot way) when I see them, but my first thought is usually for the inspiration or how they actually took the shot, not what they took it with.
Also, I've taken some great shots with both compacts and D-SLRs so I do like the Chase Jarvis adage that the best camera is the one you have with you
Amy