Rob -

I have the 40D and have been shooting with it for a while. I'm a bit surprised to hear that you say the noise at 800 is unusable. For my camera, 800 is fine. I *may* think about noise reduction (Noise Ninja) if the picture is particularly dark. ISO1600 on my camera is only okay. Judicious noise reduction is required.

One last note, I used to use Aperture as well and while I like it's library management style, I really just can't stand it's editing capability. If you can spare the extra $100 (assuming a student discount) I'd *highly* recommend Lightroom.

Anyhow, I could go on an on about this subject but I'll just stop here.

Just as a point of reference, you can check out my blog (http://njungels.wordpress.com) or flickr stream for some pictures for reference.

Nick.