Now that I've had a chance to use some of my new camera equipment, I'll give brief reviews.
Nikon D90 camera: Very nice, perfect size. The sensor is waaaaay better than that on the D50. Great resolution and you can get clean images at ISO 1600 but the shot can't be underexposed or the grain shows. ISO 800 and under give nice noiseless shots almost always. The settings, menus and controls are just right for me. Plus it has DOF preview, top screen lights up, customizable controls, shutter delay with mirror up for night shots and lots of other conveniences. The LCD screen is big and very detailed. Auto white balance gives pretty good results on jpegs most of the time. I avoid the active D lighting feature, you're better off using curves in post processing.
Nikon 16-85 f/3.5-5.6 VR lens: I'm very happy with this. Compared to all the 18-XX lenses out there, the extra 2mm on the wide end is very useful. It is much more than taking a few steps back, 16mm actually starts to show a noticeable wide angle perspective. But it's so much more convenient than a wide angle lens because it zooms to 85 mm. It's slow with a max aperture of 3.5-5.6, but it's perfectly fine for outdoors. The VR functions extremely well, I've gotten clear shots down to about 1/8 second. Focuses very fast and manual focus is always available for fine tuning. It's really sharp, very noticeably sharper than the Nikon 18-55 I was using. It seems to produce more contrast and deeper colours as well. Combined with the D90, I find the images barely need any processing. My only complaint is the focus ring is closer to the camera than the zoom ring.
Nikon 35mm f/1.8: I find 50mm too tight most of the time so I got this lens. Very sharp images (as you'd expect from a prime) with good colour and contrast. Focuses quickly. The purpose of this lens is for indoor shots and other situations where a fast lens is needed. 35mm on a DX format camera gives the perspective of a normal lens (like what the eye sees) and I'm finding this focal length can be useful in many situations. My only complaint is it has noticeable barrel distortion, but this is no big deal for people shots and most of the other situations I intend to use this lens for.
Nikon 55-200 f/4-5.6 VR: I traded my 55-200 non VR and a few bucks for a used one. I figured it would be about the same as the older non-VR model, but I think it is slightly sharper, focuses a bit faster and maybe has better bokeh. Definitely of lesser quality than the 16-85 and 35mm, but still excellent and a worthy upgrade from the non-VR model. The VR is not nearly as good as the VR on the 16-85, but it still helps. This is a good value and much, much smaller and lighter than the more expensive telephoto zooms.