I now have a d90 and d60.....the d60 only has the one dial where as the d90 has two......plus most of the settings can be reached without having to dive into the menu every five seconds like on the d60.

There's another interesting point - menus. I hate menus. Does the Canon 40D have menus for major parameters?

If you go to this page http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/ and scroll down you will see a list of all the cameras they have reviewed right back to 1998. Pick the camera you are interested in and work your way through the dozen or so pages of info on each camera. Lots of detail that should answer most of your questions. Once I had set up my 40D as I wanted I hardly ever went near the menus again apart from formatting the card, used it just like a film camera. Of the Canon cameras it is the xxD series you want to look at as they are better built than the more entry level models and have controls most like a film camera.