I want to buy a Digital SLR. What is the best available in the price range of $900-$1400?

Nikon, Canon and Olympus are three main players, along with Pentax and Sony/Minolta.
Try to go to a camera store and handle them for yourself. You may find that one or another just fit and feel better in your hands.
Canon and Nikon have more accessories and lenses, but for a beginner, the kit lens should do fine. Or if you want a better lens, a 50mm 1.8 is about as good as they get and at around $100 the best buy in camera lenses, although 50mm would be a little on the telephoto end on a small sensor SLR.
The Canon Rebel and Nikon's D50, D70s and maybe the D80 are within your budget. Also Olympus has a kit that comes with 2 lenses, but I forget what the camera is called.
Don't forget to budget for a memory card and maybe a flash as well.
And be prepared to do some reading in the manual, especially if you have never used a SLR before!
And don't forget an imaging working program such as Paintshop Pro, Adobe Photoshop, or Photoshop Elements. There are many others as well. SLRs put out a flatter image than consumer digicams, and usually need a little punch and adjusting to look their best.
Good luck!

I agree with Bruce. Get a body in the $550-$650 range, reserve $100 for a fast 2GB memory card, and spend the rest of your budget on lenses. Which lenses, depends on what you want to shoot.
For Nikon, the Nikon 18-70mm ($310) makes a nice standard zoom.
For Canon, the Canon 17-85mm ($500?) is very good.
You could spend more on even better quality glass, or you could add a second zoom, a flash, a tripod, etc.... what ever you need to round things out.
Another way to go, is to spend $800-$1000 on the body (the Canon 400D and the Nikon D80 are very nice), but you'll risk ending up with a cheap cheap lens and inferior image quality, despite having more mega-pixels. I'd recommend against it.

For underneath $one million,000 a Pentax K10D with 18-fifty five has magnificence main science and probably the most backward compatibility with older lenses. They are becoming tough to uncover as the brand new K20 begins delivery in a couple of weeks (round $1300)

I agree with OMG agreeing with Bruce, but I'd say to look at the NikonD80 with their "kit" lens, which is actally a brand new, nice DX lens made for this camera. I just priced on for my brother at B&H for $1,450. Here's some of the letter I wrote for him.
~~~~~

Here the D80 kit, except it's out of stock. $1,450.

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=6222&A=details&Q=&sku=464957&is=REG&addedTroughType=categoryNavigation

Here's a way to get the camera and card. $1,073.
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=6222&A=details&Q=&sku=464956&is=REG&addedTroughType=categoryNavigation

and the same lens, but not packaged as a kit. $400.
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=12041&A=details&Q=&sku=449087&is=USA&addedTroughType=categoryNavigation

Or a slightly cheaper, but still nice enough nice lens. $310.
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=12041&A=details&Q=&sku=324190&is=USA&addedTroughType=categoryNavigation

Canon Rebel XTi, 2 gb memory card, 1 or 2 lenses that will cover what you need. The Nikons are for people who care more about the feel of the camera than image quality and resolution. If you just want darn good photos the XTi can do it, and do it well.

for that amount.. i would go for a the new Sony Alpha... ;) it's a Sony+Minolta in one :)

Probably either Nikon D50 or D70, or Canon XT. But you may have to shop around and the price does not include lens or only come with basic lens.

Hi,
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Angie