As a graphic designer who has used photoshop professionally for the last 7 years, the buzz I hear from friends in the industry is to not go CS3 yet, if not for the many reports of bugginess circulating around online photoshop user forums, then merely for the fact that it is even more resource hungry than it's predecessor. When I trialled CS2, after using photoshop 7 for four years (CE version, which is faster and doesn't contain resource-hogging US fed anti-counterfeiting spyware) I was stunned at how more resource greedy CS2 was - so I shudder to imagine how much worse CS3 can be, going by the reports I hear. I decided after trying CS2 to stick with PS7, which is what I still currently use. For the kind of print, pre-press and high-end photography restoration work I do (when I am not developing graphics for web) it has served me just fine and I can't justify forking out for an upgrade when it would require a hardware upgrade too. But then, I'm of the "don't fix if it's not broken" school of thinking.... as well as being a spendthrift.... and I also tend to wonder how much of the bloated commercial software we used today is REALLY an upgrade when they bring out a new version.... Vista being a good case in point... But seriously tho, except for a few useful new features in PS7, I can't see much advantage to anything new that's been added by Adobe since PS6 - it's mostly been resource-hogging candy for non-pro users so they can market PS to the amateur digital photography market. Just my opinion. And I know there will be many who disagree because resource use is just not an issue for them. Nice for those who can afford a computer with fancy new hardware huh And yanno... if it wasn't for Image Ready I think I could probably be content with the old photoshop 5 even hehehe