Congrats on wanting to spend time looking up instead of at your feet!
Purchasing a telescope can be hard if you don't know what you are doing, and unsure of what it is you want to look at. According to your post, you want to look at stars.
Keep in mind that stars, even in a telescope look like bright points of lights. Even with the most powerful telescope that you could buy with your money (in the thousands of dollar range), stars will still look like bright points of lights. You won't see anything like we do with the sun and special filters (IE sun spots, flares, etc).
If you are interested in looking at planets, the scope you linked will do just fine, you'll be able to see Mars with it's polar caps (but not a lot of detail), Jupiter's cloud bands (but it's moons are so tiny that they'll look just like bright points), Saturn's rings.
If you are interested in looking at deep space objects (nebulas, galaxies, etc), then I would recommend a telescope with a larger light gathering. Like a 8 inch Dobsonian or larger:
en.wikipedia.org...
The larger the reflecting mirror of the scope allows you to "gather" more light, allowing you to see clearly fainter objects in the sky.
For details (magnification) that actually is dependant upon your eye pieces and not so much the telescope itself. The more powerful the eye piece the better you can zoom in. Do some research on eye pieces as you'll want to buy others besides the standard 20 or 25 mm one that comes with your telescope.
Astro Pics: if you want to take pictures with a telescope, then you are on the right track with the telescope you linked. Dobs are a lot harder to use, especially when you need to zoom in, due to the earth's rotation.
Why take pictures? Well, the other thing about using a telescope is this: all those really colorful pictures you see of other galaxies and nebulas are not what you'll see with your eyes. The light is so faint, even with a large telescope that they'll look bluish / grey in color. Our eyes are just not made to see color at such a low level of light.
But a camera, either film or the wonderful digital CCD cameras can.
Just make sure of this: that you know what you want to do, and what telescope would be best for it before you buy. This is NOT a cheap hobby! I always recommend getting a cheap scope for those that just want to try it out first. Then if they decide they're not that excited about it, they didn't waste too much money. Or if they decide that yah, they love it, they can then invest in a much larger and more expensive equipment.
Good luck and may you have clear skies!
I'm beyond drawn to every aspect of Space and while his scope was nice and gave me hours of study, awe, and enjoyment, it was never
'enough' in every aspect of the definition. ^_^ 
and knew it was time. The only way I'd move back to Chicago land is if I got a job at the Adler Planetarium; yet it's in Chicago. A city.
Bright lights. Somehow it doesn't seem as good as Southern Illinois in my back yard. 'Course I don't have the huge scope they do either. 
. 
