Well guys, I headed over to my parents place to check this new camera out. I have to admit it's pretty sweet. Got it with an 18-135mm zoom with it. Lots of range. The part that I didn't realize is that the Nikon camera hasn't changed their mount, so my dad's Nikor lenses from 1967 still work on the new digital camera (the aperature control is still mechanical). I thought that was pretty cool. Overall I'm very impressed. I will however be sticking with Canon still, too much investment to switch up now. Looks like I'll have to start saving for that 30D. The functionality of the D80 blows the Digital Rebel out of the water. But I expected that.
My dad is really really happy with the purchase, and looks like he'll be getting back into photography in a big way. I'm glad, he's the one that got me into photography when I was a kid. For some reason he stopped being interested in fully manual photography when I got my first Canon SLR. He was finding focusing to be a challenge, and really liked autofocus. Somethings annoyed him about the newer cameras though. Hopefully he'll be shooting a lot more with the new Nikon. Nice to see him enjoying a hobby that he stopped doing out of frustration. I can tell already he is really satisfied with the D80.