do you know of anything that is a better value than that Digislave DSF-1 you linked?

I've never used any of these things in person, so it's difficult for me to say whether any of them work at all. On the other hand, you can't go too wrong for $50. Personally, I recently bought myself a Nikon D70 with the kit lens and the SB-800 flash. It's just astonishing how many nifty things you can do with this camera. But, that's a story for another thread.

In short, I see this slave flash thing as a stop-gap measure to tide you over until you're ready to drop bigger bucks on a shiny new camera (as discussed in the other thread about available-light photography). If/when you get something like a Canon G3, then you're getting a camera that can support a Canon-branded flash. (Likewise, if you buy a nice Nikon, you can use a Nikon-brand flash.) Generally speaking, the same-brand flashes can do more sophisticated things than off-brand flashes, which again, in general, means that your pictures will be more likely to come out properly exposed.