Lately Ive been wanting a new digital camera, but the high quality SLR style ones with the large sensors are $800+. Problem is that the non SLR cameras use a much smaller sensor and even the good ones make a lot of digital noise, especially with higher ISO (that how sensative the sensor is, typically you have to make the ISO higher (more sensative) when taking pictures of fast action (you need a fast shutter speed so less time for light to get in), or in just plain lower light situations. Cleaning up these noise issues has always been a pain for me, and takes hours of photoshopping with less than stellar results, but I just found a freeware solution (they have a paid version for batch processing but the free version rocks!). It doesnt just blur the image, it really takes out the noise while retaining 95% of the sharpness.
Look at the bottom for COMMUNITY EDITION original
filtered
These are a part of a large 400 ISO image from Steve's Digicam site, and as you can see, the filtered image is outstanding!