DSLR Recommendations

The kit lenses aren't all bad necessarily. The 18-70 (I think?) that came with my D70 is pretty good. I compared it to much more expensive lenses that I bought, and the difference in quality (or sharpness, at least) was small. You should be able to find ample research online that indicates the quality of a particular kit lens.

I think the kit zoom lenses that have extremely wide ranges are more likely to give less satisfactory results - e.g. the 28-200 type range. At least that's prevailing wisdom, and my nikon 28-200 (circa 1998) is noticeably softer than my nikkor 24-50 and 70-200 lenses.

One feature to consider shopping for, depending on how you'll use the camera, is mirror lockup. The D200 has it, but Nikon's web site makes no mention of it for the D80. If you use slower shutter speeds, this will give you much sharper images (generally assuming you're using a tripod or other support, though it can also help out with 1/30th shutter speed handheld). The mirror shakes the camera a fair bit.