Well hello all you Canon people.
We've added the 500D to this thread because it is similar to the 550D.
Coincidentally I've just got a 500D. It was swapped for my D200 and I expected something like the Nikon D3100 but I was very pleasantly surprised by just how good this little baby Canon is. Being a Nikon pro user I am more used to the larger models so I bought D40x and D60 cameras for the kids. I have had a good play with this camera and I am impressed. The quality feels better and the feature list is better than the Nikon equivalent. I think I might be advising people differently for the smaller bodies now
I got this camera to test my new product with canons as well as nikons and I will be converting it to IR as part of my other hobby which is astronomy.