Hi Dusty,
I would wholeheartedly say that hamsters make great pets. We had one, which sadly passed away on Sunday, which was totally devastating for both me and my 5 yo old DD (that is the only downside, is that you get so attached to them but they don't have a very long life span).
I found ours very easy to look after. They need quite a big cage, many pet shops (like Pets at Home) sell these tiny little ones which are woefully inadequate for their needs. I ended up getting a big, three story one on line (sorry can't remember the name of the site).
They also need a lot of exercise. I initially had one of those balls where she could run around my flat, but she worked out that if she took a run up, and crash against a wall she could break it open and escape. In the end I would just close the living room door and let her run around in there. She was adorable - climbing up the bookcase, up my legs, along the window ledge. A downside of this is that she loved to chew up my carpet, for such a small thing she managed to make quite a mess of one corner of my living room.
She was relatively easy to tame. It took about a week. We did it by putting a blanket in the bathtub and let her run around. Gently we would pick her up and get her used to being handled. She was very affectionate, she would sometime fall asleep on my chest whilst I stroked her.