Hee, well, it's handy. Definitely is nice among kit lenses, for not feeling like junk in your hand, if nothing else.
I've been doing a little playing around, ... and I'm a lot happier with it with a little sharpening in camera (and usually a bit more in computer... still working on my post-processing skills here.
Nice little surprise is how close in the macro gets: I'm rather used to zooms having a token effort at best and calling it 'macro,' this gets in pretty usefully-close. (Could be I'm just behind the times, here)
Anyway, Marc, I did some playing around the middle range, today, it does seem pretty nice: I think tomorrow I'll see what I can really get out of the wide end. I've got similar thoughts about holding out with the kit lens for the wide angle, for a while: if I can get away without stuff down in the 18-20 range, I think I'd rather work with something like a 28-75 when I go for a 2.8 zoom. First thing I did was get a 50 1.4 for what I like to do best, so if the kit is a bit soft at 55, it's pretty OK.
All in all, seems prety good for a kit lens.