I have used a number of digital cameras, but they've never come even close to the quality of a decent 35mm camera.  I recently have tested a Canon EOS Digital Rebel, and can tell you honestly that times are changing. 

The EOS Digital Rebel takes fast pictures (as fast as 4-shot bursts), in quality levels that easily rival those of 35mm shots.  It has all the manual settings you would expect form a good 35mm (aperture priority, shutter priority, bulb setting, etc.), and is the size and shape of a 'real' camera.  The Lithium Ion battery didn't move from 'full-charge' through the whole weekend of testing, and a 512MB card looks like it will hold about 220 of the 2+ MB images (I didn't even get into shooting in 'raw' mode with 6MB images.  Frankly, I don't see a need). 

The camera I tested was paired with a Canon CP-100 dye-sub printer (out of production...replaced by the CP-200) which produces 4x6” prints in about a minute (each).  You can connect the printer to a computer first, or print directly from the camera. 

Offloading images from the camera is a breeze with the wizard that installs with the Canon driver...pick which images you want copied by selecting their thumbnails, and the wizard does the rest. 

By the way, the printer supplies can be purchased on Amazon.com for about $14(US) for 36 prints.  The quality is good enough that we're using this camera for fingerprint comparisons (under magnification).  Honestly, you can't look at the resulting prints and tell that they aren't from the photo lab.