Review on Nikon 18-70mm f/3.5-4.5G ED IF AF-S DX Nikkor Zoom Lens - White Box(Bulk Packaging): Versatile and Affordable Lens for Nikon DSLRs by Tyson Burch

This is a great lens - images are clear, relatively small and light. The build quality is decent. It shows vignetting wide open and zoomed in to 18mm, but you can either remove this in Photoshop along with the barrel distortion, or set the camera to remove the distortion. Photoshop works better, but the in-camera processing (on the D5000) works well enough if you want off-camera JPEGs. it's the cost and the overall quality. I had to cut corners to get it right. Without VR I will use it on the wide end rather than the telephoto end. If you're big on VR, don't want a crappy 18-55, and want to spend more money, go for the 18-105 or 16-85.