Good for you, D200 is really hard to bit today in price/performance ratio.

I actually just ordered a D200 from best buy. $599 was just too cheap to pass up. Terrific deal. Gonna spend the extra cash on some glass.

I have owned a D200 from the day it was launched in the UK, I shoot everything in RAW, process and save as a TIFF, from this TIFF I make jpegs of various sizes as required. The D200 is extremely well built and from experience I have found that it will stand up to much hard use. As most of my subjects are shot using 200 ISO at the moment I do not see any major advantage in moving up to a D300.
As a reader of dpreview I am sure you are aware there are some very good deals available on the D200 if you live in America, based on my experience I would have no hesitation in recommending a D200 especially at the price, I will change in the future but I will have to see physical evidence of a major improvement in image quality before spending my money.

Basically the image quality would be near the same if shot at default. In fact most cameras look the same if shot at default. My D300 wasn't much different at default setting than my D40 was.

As mentioned before, it's the tweaks in camera that will make the difference (besides the skill of the photographer). The D60 has an infant Active D-Lighting which is lacking in the D200 and D80. This could make a bit of a difference in dynamic range.

The differences are really cosmetic but all the same important depending on what you need and how you shoot. The D80 is a little bigger than the D60 and has more controls on the outside which keeps you from having to dive into the menus all the time. The D200 has the best build quality out of the three and the best set up for adjusting controls as it has several dedicated buttons on the outside. These three cameras are all gen 1's so it's harder to draw a line than it would be for these and any of the newer models. I've not shot RAW with any of these so I couldn't tell you how they'd do there.

Over in the forums at DPReview, I heard two completely different statements regarding the image quality of the D60 and the D200. Since they both have the 10.2 CCD censor, I figured their image quality would be the same until I read this..

"In terms of noise in JPEG images, you might see an edge from the in-camera processing in the D60. Both the D60 and D200 are using a CCD (vs. the CMOS type sensor in the D300/D90), so the grain characteristics with these two cameras will be very similar. However in RAW capture, the D200 wins - no contest. Do keep this in mind - the D200 hardware captures sharper images and a higher level of detail, since the anti-aliasing filter is of much better quality then that used in the D60."

Is any of that true? Because I then I read this in a different thread regarding the same topic..

"The D60,80,200 all use the same sensor. So IQ is roughly the same between them."

Which statement is correct? Wonder if there are any pros around here who would be able to help me with this one.

Thanks all!