I have the XTi and mostly only use the 1.8 50mm lens with it.
Do not buy the kit with th lens. The kit lens starts to make pictures look like dog crap after using better lens’s. I like the camera very much and it was worth every penny. Though, I have to say I chose the Canon because my brother has a lot of pro canon lens I can borrow. Otherwise I might have gone Nikon.
If you do get the Xti, I have some kind of cheesey tutorial DVD’s someone gave me you can have for free. They are made for a complete beginner.
Oh, another note. I am not sure of they fixed it or not, but some of the XTi’s has slightly wrong white balance settings in auto mode. I dont care because I never use auto mode anyway.
http://picasaweb.google.com/penfold1/MarillaCarShow
there are some examples