Thanks for the great replies everyone!
Marko I do take photography seriously now.. I've always loved to take pictures of everything but I've never had a very good camera. My little (broken) camera I have now is just a basic point and shoot. My friend who is a photographer has been helping me pick a camera out and basically told me to just get the Canon Rebel to start off. she has a very expensive Canon DSLR worth about $2,000... but she needs it as photography is how she makes her money.
I don't have any plans to be a photographer... but i can't tell you how many times my dinky camera has missed a great shot because it wouldn't turn on fast enough, would focus or just zoomed to the wrong thing. I do get some great pictures from it but for every good picture I get I get about 10 that completely suck and are out of focus
I got my hands on some kind of nice camera recently and I turned it on, took the picture I was asked to take and it .. it just worked! It didn't have to pause to focus and blink and tell me all the errors.. I just aimed and clicked!