Yep. I live in the Bluffs which is south of Kingston Road, but north of Kingston Road it's not very nice in many areas, and much of Kingston Road itself is not very nice either. Once you go further north, it gets nice again, albeit in a cookie cutter suburban type of way. The Bluffs' homes are from 50+ years ago, unless they've been torn down and rebuilt, whereas much of north Scarborough is more recent suburban-like subdivisions.
In the north part of Scarborough it is very Chinese with lots of good Chinese restaurants, but some people find it a little too unicultural. OTOH, in the Bluffs it tends to be very Caucasian. The restaurants and much of the shopping generally sucks near the Bluffs, aside from rare reasonable places, or you can drive west to The Beach or whatever, or north to the good Chinese restaurants. One thing about the Bluffs is that you can actually buy waterfront detached homes for a little under $700000 (or at least you could until recently). Sure most of these properties are small 50s houses that need fixing up, but for many, getting a 50'-frontage waterfront property beats paying $600000 for 3-bedroom townhouse elsewhere with almost no land. Away from the water it gets progressively cheaper as you go north.
Note I said drive. Transit is abysmal in much of the Bluffs, although in certain areas it's better.
As for transit in the Bluffs and niceness of Kingston Road: There is a stretch of Kingston Road that has just been
rezoned. Right now it is composed of old 2-storey buildings and drab strip malls, but the area of land and the roadway is actually quite huge. With the rezoning, there is a potential for huge condo/townhouse/retail growth there. If that happens (in the next 15-20 years), then the time to get in would have been now, when it's still inexpensive. Along with the rezoning is a new transit study that is recommending Bus Rapid Transit along that stretch, to meet up with the Bloor-Danforth Subway line.
Also, at Warden and St. Clair and Midland and St. Clair for example are some new townhouse subdivisions, which are reasonably done. Nothing terribly exciting in terms of design, but clean, inexpensive, safe, and close to transit.
My favourite part of Scarborough is the area around Fallingbrook, adjacent to The Beach. It's very upscale there, and close to The Beach without having to deal with all the hectic crowding of the Beach, with much nicer homes with character too. However, I don't live there, because it's quite expensive there.
BTW, my drive downtown in the am would be about 25 minutes or so, although if I go a bit later it can stretch to 35 mins. (In off peak hours it's about 20 minutes to Union Station for me.) My neighbours take the GO train. It's a 5 minute drive to the GO station, and then a 15 minute GO train ride. I don't actually usually work downtown though. I work elsewhere and it's nice being able to get to about the Yonge/Eg area driving in less than 30 mins during rush hour, whereas my Richmond-dwelling driving coworkers might take up to an hour in rush hour.
Much (but not all) of the Indian food and Chinese food for example in the immediate vicinity is quite bad. And by bad I mean really bad. When I lived downtown I'd just pop over to Chinatown and any restaurant there was at least reasonable, with some better than others. Luckily it's not that far of a drive to get better food, and I've gotten to like going to the local pseudo-British tea shops for scones and Buckingham Palace tea and the like locally. 
