Personally, I use a nikon D70 dslr for most of my photos, or borrow my fiancée's casio exilim ex-s600 when I want to travel light. Both can produce spectacular results.

For me, I learned a lot about photography through reading. If you have the time, I recommend reading several of Ken Rockwell's articles on the subject, such as:

How to Make Greate Photographs
Your Camera doesn't matter
Critical Camera Adjustments
Photograph is not a Spectator Sport
How to get Great Colors

Just about everything on his site is really useful, from camera recommendations to photo gallerys. I highly recommend it!

Another great online resource are the Digital Grin forums. This site focuses more on the photography side of things, and less on the camera side, the way too many internet sites do. A lot of friendly pro photographers hang out there. A particularly useful forum is the Whipping Post, where you can post a picture that you think is pretty good, and readers will post constructive criticism, suggestions for post-processing, etc. I like just looking at all the photos that people post, in 'Shots' forums.

Don't leave out post-processing as a way to make your photos 'pop!' Almost every photo you see from a professional has been subtly enhanced in photoshop or similar editing programs. You can even just add a little contrast, saturation, and sharpening in Picasa for some pretty impressive results.

Straight from the (casio) camera:


After some quick tweaks in Picasa (+saturation, auto contrast, +sharpness):