i have considered getting the lens... big ol' range on that bad boy but not too fast at the telephoto end...
True, but by and large it works great. Granted, my wife and I haven't really given it a good solid workout yet but from a range perspective we love it. Now, we moved into it from a Tamron 28-300 so from our perspective it's amazingly better!
I think the cost ($2200 new) and weight (3.7 lb) puts a lot of people off. But I doubt you'll find too many problems with the glass with an APS-C camera.