I recently attended the SANS "Security Essentials" course.

Very good, overall. A huge amount of material is covered, content was excellent and it was well presented. I am intending going for the certification.

The online material is the same stuff which is presented at the course, i.e. very good IMHO.

Does a SANS certification look good on the resume? Well, it won't hurt, but whether it has the clout of CISSP or one of the Cisco certs, I don't know.