Brad, thank you for those kind words, I do what I can. with regard to systems, I was always an Olympus OM system man, mainly for all the travel I use to do, always wanted a Canon F1 so bought into that system in a big way and still have a number of bodies and lenses, mainly keepers, as they are quite rare. Bought into the Nikon DSLR system because i wanted to go taking snaps underwater and at the time most systems supported the Nikon kit.
Brad is right, everyone will have a view about why their system is the best. in the main it comes down to; what you personally like, you may think Canon is the best and irrespective of the evidence will always pick Canon, also, how the system works for you, make sure that the image you've seen in your minds eye is the one that the camera has recorded, controls, how they are used and convenience, cost, especially as you want the system to do more, so in brads case, excellent lenses, can always move up the scale with the bodies and so on. With a DSLR system most if not all will produce publishable A3 shots with care, DO NOT become a measureabator, think carefully about the Mega-pixel count, its not everything, the quality of the chip, lens and electronics is far more important, I wouldn't use anything bigger than a 1-2 Gig CF card, depending on chip size, always shot RAW and get a good photo manipulation system like photoshop elements, maybe CS if you use a MAC. Also you really do need to know your photography, crap in crap out has never been truer.
of course, you will need to make sure the system is color managed, from the monitor, scanner, printer, etc. I always shot in RAW set everything to Adobe 1998 RGB and go from there. the delights of color spaces and gamut's await.
Look at some of the web forums out there, plenty of advise.
