About noise issue, sometimes, people do blow things out of proportion. And if you're coming from film to digital for the first time, it probably won't bother you at all. People just get too used to looking at low noise images at 100% magnification and are a bit spoiled about it. It was a sore point w/ the G3 vs G5 comparisons, and then, it became a big deal in the 300D/10D vs D70 comparisons even though the differences were really negligible. And of course, everyone's heard all the noise over the Sony F828 too.
Of course, it *is* nice to have less noise (and less PF and whatever other artifacts), but it's not always the end of the world though.
Personally, I find the grainy look to be a good thing sometimes, and even add grain to some of my pics at times. And also, there have been many who feel that Canon applies too much in-camera NR on their 300D/10D images, which seems to give people a plasticky look w/ missing fine textures/details in skin.
_Man_
