In reply to ford23:
More important than the camera body itself, in my opinion, is the range and quality of glass available. Once you've bought a camera from one manufacturer and have a collection of lenses, you're stuck with that manufacturer unless you replace your lenses. Also the same with crop sensor vs full frame - some lenses are designed specifically for crop sensors and won't fill the sensor on a full frame camera. With Canon you can't even mount an EF-S lens on a full frame body, whereas at least with Nikon you can mount the lens, and the camera will detect that it's a DX lens and crop accordingly. Something to consider if you see this as the beginning of an ongoing interest in photography.
I have a Nikon D3200 (now superseded by the D3300, and thus can be found very cheap), and am very happy with it.
