what do you guys think about the efs 18-55mm

I must say it's not as bad as I first thought.
Stop it down a bit and it gives quite sharp images.
It is crappy build wise though.
All in all a good knock around lens.

Keep it.
You'll need something to keep on the 300D when you upgrade.

I keep mine *ONLY* for it's inexpensive wide angle abilities-which i rarely do.

Other than that i must VERY much go against the tide here and say it's an absolute shocker of a lens.
The really irritating thing about it is that it simply takes 'ok' pics-never anything better than that and certainly nothing outstanding or to be really pleased with.
It's no good saying that it allmost compares to (insert expensive lens model of choice) , because in the feild it just sucks.

A few weeks ago i tried to use mine again.Out of about 100 pics i took, maybe **3** are ok.
Sure i was doing action photography so many were understandably out of focus but even those that were perfectly focused were horrible.Dull looking,blury and with 'muddy' colours.

The lens does ok indoors when you have a flash. Those pictures come out rather good.

Outside though it's another story. Even at F8 the leaves on trees gives away how soft the lens is. It's not sharp at all and you can notice the difference between it and say.....the 50mm 1.8. I've stuck both on my camera and the 50mm 1.8 just takes alot sharper pictures.

It's an "ok" lens that's a cheap wide angle. It takes some good post processing for the outside shots to be good at times.

i know they are not great photos, nor are they big enough to truely see lens quality, but i'm just pointing out that if i didnt have the kit lens with my today i wouldnt have got these shots, and i think the quality isnt bad:

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im taking it out tonight to see if i can get some wide(er) angle shots of the city...i am also bringing my 50 1.8

Jackal, your remark reminded me of this image I took recently.

I was just playing around with this lens, and was actually pleasantly surprised. The images are boring by subject (just testing), but I found the amount of detail surprising, especially after having read the common opions on this lens. The detailed image is a actual pixel crop, and shows the little hairy bits and the internal structure of the leaf with quite some detail. Oh, and this is not even taken at the sweet f8 spot.

(20D, 18-55 @ 39 mm, 5.6, iso 400, shutter 1/200s)

Lastly, I have no experience on any of the L competion this lens has (16-35 or 17-40), so maybe I don't have the reference set correct. But thus far I'm not negative on the optical performance (other than purple haze). Of course I think the build is just rubbish and flimsy, and it is rather slow. But, hey, it's definitaly not 100% rubbish.

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I meant if you take a picture of a tree from 50-60ft. (Not that I like taking pictures of trees....Just to test.)

I've tested both the 50 1.8 at F8 and the 18-55mm at F8 and the 1.8 destroys it in sharpness. The kit lense works wonders when objects are super upclose (you can take some nice macros with this). But when things get far it gets a little bad.

I wasn't happy with my outdoor shots with the kit lense too much and other pictures in general so I ordered the Tamron 28-75 from B&H a few days ago. I get it tomorrow afternoon. I'll do comparison shots with it and post em ASAP.

Keep it. Aside from the aforementioned reasons that it's a cheap wide-angle and it'll give you something to leave on your DR when you upgrade to something else, it's a much smaller "walk-around" than any of the L glass if you need to take a small package somewhere.

There is a great review of this lens here:

http://www.photo.net/e​quipment/canon/efs18-55/
It is a pretty good lens for the price and allows you to wait until you can afford a great wide angle.