heavysigh I will add my 2 cents. I am not the most qualified to respond and will be interested in what others may say, but, I am buying digital myself for the FIRST time so my apprehension was rather accute and so was my research on it.

As it happens I landed on the 20D only because it was equal to the 1D MKII in noise levels with the same (+-) pixel count, which renders the same print size and quality. The other consideration which wieghed heavily was the 20D FOV crop of 1.6x. I shoot 90% wildlife and when buying telephoto's can save you LOTS of money (better glass rather than cheaper which will render a bigger differance in picture quality than the differance between the two camers) over the 1.3x of the MKII and keep you using 1.4x when necessary rather than 2x with it's resolution issues. 5 frames a sec. is plenty for me and while not the tank the MKII is, it is well made.

The 350XT just fell a little short for me,
1) having a plastic body
2) (not the same) pixel count or noise spec
3) 3 frames per sec. (not fast enough)

For what it's worth my best freind of 36 years recently upgraded from the D60 to the 20D and loves it.

Michael says he has changed his review criterion but I suspect there just wasn't much to say about the 350 rather than it's a nice point and shoot upgrade.

I upgraded from a D60 to a 20D.

4 points in favour of the 20D, in order of priority:-

(1) Much better performance at high ISO's. 1600 ISO really is useable. On the D60 it's non-existant.

(2) Much faster response all round; faster writing speeds to the CF card but perhaps more importantly much faster start-up. When the camera is in stand-by mode, a touch of the shutter button bring the camera to life almost instantly. With the D60 there was a significant delay that potentially would result in a lost shot.

(3) Availability of a true wide-angle lens, the Canon 10-22mm. This is equivalent to the 16-35mm on the Canon full frame 35mm.

(4) Marginal increase in resolution. Not significant, but any increase is better than no increase  :D

I bought a D30 when they hit the market almost four(?) years ago. I used it religiously and fell in love with Digital. I upgraded immediately to the D60 when it hit a year later. There was no question. The D60 had improved on so many things over the D30: focusing, noise, color, buffer size, speed not to mention resolution. Canon didn't fix a few annoying problems like focussing but hey, the D60 was still Canon DSLR V2.0.
I've been using the D60 ever since and have been mostly happy but I'm starting to feel that itch again. Here's the three choices as I see it: do I go with a 20D or a Rebel XT or  stay with the D60 until the 30D(?) or whatever it will be called.
Are the new 20D or Rebel XT that much better? I've read all of Michael's reviews (and his opinions tempt me) but I would like to hear from the prosumer crowd who have experience with at least two of these three cameras.

I shoot mostly landscape and wildlife with the occasional day spent doing street photography, just in case anyone needs to know. Very little sports and such.

Thanks for the great forum.

Heavysigh,
   In terms of image quality either of the new cameras will be nearly identical to each other (read reviews on either DPReview or LL), and probably not that different from your D60.  The question that you have to ask is:  Do I want a better tool to produce the same images, or do I want the same tool to make higher quality images.  If the answer is the you was a better tool, no doubt the 20D is considerably better in every way.  If the answer is you want higher quality images you may be dissapointed in the incremental improvement compared to your last upgrade.
   As to looking towards the next 20D, Canon seems to release new cameras in that segment every 18 months.  This means a year from now.  While I generally don't recomend reading Ken Rockwell's site he does make an excellent point about digital upgrades.

http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/obsolescence.htm