The beauty of the Canon SLR - is you can use your already existing Canon lens - or in my case - because I'm cheap, the Tamaron equivilents.

An SLR also gives you everything you already understand and WANT TO CONTROL. A low end digital will not permit the variety of options for:
Film Speed
Apeture (Personaly, the MOST important)
Shutter Speed
Depth of Field
Focal Range
11X14 inch prints with virtually no grain.
Time from Button-Press to Photo Capture with no delay

However, if you want a GREAT camera for copying photos to webpages, or items for E-Bay to sell, even newspapers with OCR-distilation. The old (late 1990's) Mavica10X (SONY)(1.4 floppy) creates a low-res (28-50K file) that cannot be beat for web-displays and with a 10X zoom and a 1X1 (postage stamp size) closeup it is versitile. Quick, cheap, easy, dependable, affordable, repairable (mine was fixed twice) but, horrible at night with flash.

Go to the bookstore and hock over 12bucks for two good photo magazines then read the ads and reviews.

Sincerely,
Gargoyle

I like live music, I like no amps, I like film and prints (with digital scans in the processing)I like a compass, map, and triangulation. But, I have also watched Serius, GPS, and Adobe grow over and shadow my small foot-prints in the sands-of-time.

There are printers and inks that promise 70 years .... I have family photos twice that age, I have B&W prints (with negatives) of the prohibition 1920's age that look like they left the dark-room yesterday...I have polaroids from 40 years ago that look like boiled cauliflower. Be careful - if it is important - be safe rather than sorry.