Trailrunner:

I've had my XSi for about six months now, and love it. It's eons ahead of my old Rebel: SD cards, 12mp, big LCD screen, long battery life.

Here's one of the best deals I've seen, surprisingly at Costco.

(That URL worked when I first posted this, but now there's an error response, try it later.)

So for $750 (plus tax and S&H, less a $17 2G SD card, free), you can get the camera and standard IS lens AND the 75-300mm long Canon telephoto included for $50 less than I paid just for the body and 18-55mm IS lens half a year ago.

Note, though, that in this deal the long telephoto is not IS (image stabilization). I love that wide-angle one I have, and find I can take pix down to 1/15 of a second with it and they are usually still sharp if I hold the camera real steady. I've got that same Canon telephoto lens -- but older -- and am okay with it not being IS.

I take maybe 70 percent (or more) of my pix with the wide lens.

Seeing the above comments about Broadway, that I've been railing about for years here, I just can't see how they can continue to be in business. But then I ask myself the same thing when I see the credit card companies all doin' business in South Dakota. They go where they're comfortable as they do what they do best with a minimum of oversight. I promise you, in five years, someone on this forum will "discover" they've been scammed by Froadway, another Internet lamb led to slaughter.

If you want that long lens to be IS, check out the "package" deals at B&H or Beach or Ritz (where I got my camera) -- they often have some deals and are pretty much worry free.

TR, just don't wait for the next model to come out (now a year gap between models, according to some blogs, not the old 18 months); that should be about May or June. (Cause many of us here don't want to wait that long to see some shots of those great hikes you do.)

Last thing: I was at a Best Buy in Dallas in October and I swear they had the XSi and two lenses, both IS, for well under a grand. You might want to drop by and check it out, 'cause the one I saw was an "in-store" special and not online. And if you get one, get spare batteries here at half the price of Canon's. And yet one more thing: Be very careful of what you're getting. The XS came out a few months ago and is a cheapened XSi -- they dropped the "i" but some places are getting fuzzy about how they present it as a lower mega-pixel cheaper camera. It is NOT the XSi.