Haven't used 7 for some time now, but from personal experience, and from talking to others, like the guy who did the DI for the current campaign of a famous mineral water brand, CS1 feels faster than CS2...don't think its a platform prob as well cause I run Win64 with 4GB RAM and he runs a Mac G5...it's just more resource intensive I guess...that's for doing heavy DI work of course, and also, CS2 does have some tools absent from CS1 which makes some aspects of DI easier and the longer wait justifiable...but really, for most every day things, like red eye and healing, 7 is good enough...there is a monetary investment in upgrading, in not just the software but also optimised hardware to make use of the software, and just like for cameras, the latest and greatest might not be necessary or worth the investment if what you have is really good enough...