I did it... Digital Camera

I have been holding out with the digital camera craze for awhile now, which is not consistent to my profile as an early adopter according to my friends. The reason for it is that I don't really like the all-in-one digital camera. I didn't care for the 2M or 3M pixels image quality but w/ 4M and 5M pixels camera coming down in price, I am waiting for the right moment.

Well my 10-yr old Cannon EOS Rebel finally bellied up while we were on vacation. We were not very happy with its untimely death. I took it a local shop and it would cost me about the same amount of money to buy a new analog body. So either sticking with analog or go w/ digital, this the time to do it.

After testing all-in-one digital cameras, I still didn't like them. All of them have a lag when capturing images. The lag makes it hard to take pictures of my 3-yr old and 1-yr old. We decided that a dSLR (digital SLR) may be the way to go and the only one that is affordable in the market is the Cannon EOS Digital rebel (300D). CNET did a review and gave it a 7.5 out of 10. That's plenty good for me!!!

The next choice is to buy online or local. Google search came back with several sites and a few sponsor sites. Warning: I went on Better Business Bureau to check on these sponsor sites and half of them were not recommended by BBB. The ratings on CNET and Yahoo are very consistent with BBB. After looking over several sites and checking out their prices, I went a local store and played with the camera. I talked to the owner at length about the camera and he was very knowledgeable about the product. He showed several prints out of difference sizes produced by the camera.

The price difference was about $100 between buydig and the local store. After thinking through, I decided to pay more for the local store. The owner threw in a 128M CF card and a card reader to sweeten the deal. When I left the store, I asked myself: how could small stores compete with online and the Walmarts? The owner showed me his cost for the camera and no way that he could be price-competitive.

What are your thoughts?