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Hi Greg, and welcome.
I recently bought the same scope as a beginner scope for my young son, and for $100 it's not a bad little unit - I've done a brief review somewhere else on the fourm. The eyepieces aren't great, as you may notice some blue fringing around the moon with them but the lunar views are pretty reasonable for the pricing. Even a few simple $25 plossl eyepieces would provide a step up in visual quality if you wanted to do an early upgrade.
Like you, I found that stars are a little on the dim side compared to binoculars, but that's probably par for the course for a telescope with such a small primary mirror under light polluted skies. I took my boy to a dark site with his scope along with my larger scope, and he was easily swinging his about through the milky way and found several globular and open clusters on his own, so under the right conditions it's a perfectly adequate beginner's scope. As you may become aware, there is an affliction known as "aperture fever", so you may find yourself looking longingly at larger scopes sooner rather than later, but don't rush in, and enjoy the new hobby!
PS - Jupiter is still visible in the early evening sky out to the west, but will be setting earlier and earlier - you should still be able to catch it and just make out some banding and the GRS under good conditions.
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