Okay, so tonight I thought I'd try out my new 28mm lens again for the heck of it. It was still doing the same slow focusing and high pitched squeak... however, I took the lens off and I was looking through it with my eye up really close to the back and I think my eye cavity hit the back plastic part of the lens... and I somewhat felt it move (or at least I think I did). Then I just rotated the manual focus ring a few times back and forth and wiggled it a little... then I popped it back on my camera and to my surprise... the focus was a lot quieter (no more squeak) and it seems to focus a lot faster than before... where before it was very slow moving from out of focus to in focus... now it's about as fast as my kit lens at focusing.

So, do I still return it and get my money back... or should I keep it now that it's working okay. I've never owned or even tried another USM lens... so I still don't know if this is 100% fixed or if something is just aligned right now and could go back to crappy if I bump it just right.

Also, I've been thinking that I may have made the wrong purchase.... What I really think I want now is a general purpose zoom lens that is higher optical quality than my 18-55mm kit lens and a larger zoom range.

So far my two most popular choices for this is:
EF-S 17-85mm f/4-5.6 USM IS: The pros for this lens are; super wide angle to medium telephoto range, USM, Image Stabilization. Some cons are; fairly slow at only f/4-5.6, big, heavier and will not work on a full frame sensor so if I upgrade to a full frame in the future, this lens will not work.

EF 28-105mm f/3.5-5.6 USM: The pros are; nice zoom range, slightly faster than the 17-85mm, cheaper and compatible with all Canon EOS cameras. The cons: still slower than the 28mm f/1.8, no image stabilization, not wide enough at only 28mm on 1.6x cropped sensor

Decisions, decisions, decisions. Do any of you Deviants have any suggestions on what I should do? I hope J&R Music and Computers can accept my returned 28mm if there's nothing wrong with it now. Oh great... how do I break it again?