Bird Strike,
We're clearly all pleased with digital cameras. I'll never go back to a film camera for primary work as my photography is very much in the low/mid amateur category. It doesn't end there, though. Put some cash away for a good sized monitor (17"+), some good software and a printer at least as good as the Epson Stylus Photo range. Special paper in that printer gives you prints better than Boots or BonusPrint.
For software, Adobe do the full range so you can rectify major glitches with the picture and even (within limits) sharpen a slightly out of focus shot.
I'm so pleased with my Olympus C-1400L that I would happily buy the latest Olympus featured as Editor's Choice in the PC Magazine Article at the link below. The only grumble I've had is that when I take a shot, it takes a few seconds to write the data to the card and therefore I can't take a succession of shots quickly. And it only has a serial port so data transfer to the PC is slow but that isn't a problem if you have several cards. Both of these drawbacks have been fixed.
http://www.zdnet.co.uk/pcmag/labs/2000/06/digicams/
My favourite trick is to take a series of shots of an occasion and make a collage of the relevant parts of each shot on one print. Saves wading through a lot of individual shots.
Unfortunately, the article prefers several other cameras to the Kodak DC280. 'luck, fobo.