Sorry to hear about the problems you have encountered. A real bummer.
But CS3 and ACR 4.1 is flat out incredible. The new Bridge - and the slideshow at 100% view is awesome.
I have been looking back at all my old raw files from vacations past. Seeing the detail in Bridge Slideshow (at a full 100% instead of the dud view from Bridge CS2) is almost like seeing the pictures for the first time.
Waiting for 6 months is bad advice as almost everything is far, far better than CS2, the old Bridge and ACR 3.x.
I would strongly recommend CS3 to everyone. It is ready and spectacular.
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I assume that CS3 PHOTOSHOP is fine, and RAW 4.1 is too. And I think CS3 RAW version is incredible. But I didn;t say wait 6 months for Photoshop only. Bridge is buggy. Google it and you will hear horror stories. Case in point, there was no Raw Peferences in Bridge until the new bridge patch came out yesterday. That's a pretty big oversight for a non beta software.
There are issues with other CS3 products also, such as Illustrator. From what I have experienced and read on CS3, it's bugggy in many of its iterations, overall, with perhaps PS and RAW being the exception.
Google CS3 Bridge and read the war stories.
If youa hve survived the last three eyars wiht CS2 and thought your workflow was okay, then I doubt another six months will kill anyone--and there will be patches.
And jsut for an example, there was a computer programmer who works for Microsoft and has worked for other large software companies, plus ahving his Master's Degree in IT and CS saying that he has ran tests on CS# and found it to be very poorly programmed in many areas, mainly Bridge. His arguments were clear and factual--thumbnail redraw times, hanging on exits, refusing to start, color problems in Vista (pretty scary), etc. His concusion was that Adobe was farming out much more programming than it has in the past, and it got done very sloppy, thus the bugs in Bridge.
But that is all academic. Google and read for yourselves, and then make up your mind when you wish to upgrade. Try "CS3 Vista" as key words.