Evaluation: 
Conclusion: Great flash... I wish it was still in production.
Review: I have been using this unit for over two years now, with no problems. Over the course of time I have gotten better with using a flash and I have yet to use all of the available options. I have purchased a 2nd flash (430EX) an together they both do very well, indoors. I have not tried using them together outside.
The battery door some complain about well all I can say is that it does take some getting use to I use enloop rechargeable batteries and for me a full charge last about a week (sometimes longer) so I do open and close the door often, it could be a better design, but it has no effect on the function and overall ease of use of this unit.
Selecting various functions, like hi-speed shutter sync is just a button push away as with many other option/functions. No need to dig through layers of menus, just simple...
Evaluation: 
Conclusion: Didn't meet expectation
Review: This flash fell short of my expectation most of the time I have to manually set the zoom distance doesn't seem to work on my canon xt that I have. For the price wasn't worth it with and auto focus camera I expected this to interact more with the camera
Evaluation:
Conclusion: Canon Speedlite 580EX
Review: The Canon 580EX is an excellent flash.
It has plenty of power. It recycled fast. There are many setting that allow you to configure it for any situation or environment. Curtain, master or slave.
The unit is expensive, when I bought it, it was the top of the line Canon flash. Since then it has been replaced with the 580EX II. One major change between the two models is the ability to configure the 580 EX II from the camera.
Evaluation:
Conclusion: Beware of slave trigger and RF wireless connection issues
Review: You want to use the 580EX in a simple task by working as a hair or back light with your more powerful studio strobes? Then you will be in for a rude surprise when you connect an inexpensive photo-optical slave-triggering mechanism to the 580's hot shoe foot. With the 580 set on manual, it will flash once and then lockup. Yes, the dreaded internal SCR lockup will require you to power off and on to reset the flash to fire another shot before it freezes again. Repeat off/on and shake your head at this expensive and poorly designed dare-I-say toy.
Is Canon trying to screw us by not telling about this issue in their instruction manual? Who knows. To our rescue is Michael Bass Designs' blog which walks us step-by-step on obtaining a compatible Sonia photo-optical slave trigger with the proper cord and modified hot shoe to be able to perform a very simple task of using a slave triggered strobe.
Because Canon "forgot" to include a PC socket, Mr. Bass will even explain what to do in order to connect an RF transceiver like the Pocket Wizard to the 580 to enable wireless flash photography. Depending on where you live, it can be a costly retrofit of an auxilary jack by Mr. Bass. Or, even better, buy a Wein hot shoe to household synch adapter and adjust the hot shoe tabs for a custom fit.
The 580 is great as an on-camera walk about flash/camera combo. It even works well in the master/slave setup or with the expensive and 10 year old Canon Speedlite Transmitter ST-E2. I also hate the plastic hot shoe foot which is almost impossible to slide into the tightest hot shoe umbrella adaptors. But, if you don't want the hassles of spending more money on third party parts to use the 580 as a slave with studio strobes, then buy (for example) a cheap Vivitar 285 and put a cheap photo-optical slave trigger on it for carefree studio work with the big boy lights.
Evaluation:
Conclusion: Excellent flash unit, good upgrade from 430EX
Review: Bought the 580 EX (Mark 1) over a year ago when I started shooting weddings. This one held really well and never missed an exposure in an Indian wedding. If you didnt know, a typical Indian wedding lasts for days, but this was an abbreviated one, and was put to work for a full 24 hours. Not one bad exposure.
Specifically, the best part about this flash is that you can hardly see that a flash was used. A little difficult when working on Aperture priority as the camera tries to expose the overall image and not just the subject, but set it to high speed sync and fire away. In case you need to adjust the image, Canon raw format is very dynamic to take care of that. A little work around, but perfectly acceptable to me.
Bouncing this lens on the ceiling takes the pictures one notch higher in IQ. Most ceilings are a shade of yellow, so the very mild yellowish pitch (almost invisible) actually becomes richer and acceptably warmer colors showing healthy and happy people, not a rabbit-looking-at-the-headlights look. Bouncing also avoids harsh shadows and is just a clear winner.
The catch light panel is quite helpful, and does a fantastic job of producing a light gradient when the subject is up close. Have used this in on multiple occasions with 85/1.8 and a little with the 135/2, and it gives such a dramatic lighting effect that it looks like the picture was taken in a studio. Highly recommend using that feature.
Considering buying one more to along with the transmitter to work in tandem wireless mode, but just started saving pennies for that.
Good buy, take a look at the Mark II version before you swipe your visa card for this.
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