Recommendation Needed - replacement for EFS 18-55mm

Riggzy,

I had the same debate a while ago, check out the discussion here for details.  

As noted, I ended choosing the Tamron AF 18-200 lens. It carries for $389 at B&H. 

I'm using a Nikon dSLR, so it's probably slightly different, but still - it depends largely on what you intend to shoot, but I can heartily recommend the 50mm f1.8 (or f1.4) lens. It's a fixed lens (no zoom) which is equivalent to an ~80mm lens on a film SLR. It's of excellent quality, has a big aperture that allows taking shots even in a dimly lit room, and produces shots with amazingly shallow depth of field. That is - when the aperture is open to the maximum (f1.8) everything is blurred except the object you focus on. This produces some extremely pleasing shots, especially of people and flowers (see here and here).

The 50mm lens was my first lens, and although I now have the 18-200mm zoom lens (original Nikkor with vibration reduction), I often go back to the 50mm one, simply because of its quality, low light performance and depth of field. Other than that, the 18-200 is a very versatile lens that covers most situations and needs and I'm quite pleased with it. It's not of the highest quality, but it's not bad, either. If I were you I would buy just one zoom lens that starts at wide angle (e.g 17mm) and goes at least to 85mm (e.g. 17-85). If you buy an original Canon lens you can get one that has IS (image stabilization) which actually works pretty well to reduce blur resulting from camera shake (e.g. when shooting at low shutter speeds).

Good luck.