You may also be interested in some of the responses in this old
weekly poll from last year
I'm one that feels if you don't know how to take the picture and are going to rely on the gear and post-processing, the best you're going to get is not going to be as good as you would get if you have the skill and knowledge of how to take a great picture in the first place. I've seen plenty of bad pictures with gear I drool over and plenty of gorgeous pictures that I would never expect given the equipment.