CS2 is ok...depends on your needs. Whats new in CS2 is masses of colour profiling and xml support workflows aimed at the print and reprographics industry, some new SVG stuff - if you don\'t know what svg is you probably don\'t need it! Improved Adobe PDF workflow and some support for the new JDF format (job description file) all of which does really target the high end commercial print user. Also much bigger support for adobe version cue, which is aimed at large groups of users working on the same files throughout the cs2 suite (illustrator, InDesign etc), there\'s also something new called exchange for browsing and swaping between applications
as far as the 9to5 stuff of editing images goes, you might find a copy of photoshop 7 or CS1 a lot cheaper than paying for CS2, and lot faster as its system and memory requirements are lower - you need at least 384 meg of free ram to do anything with it and if you want to work on big files....double it!
took the exams and got the full adobe acredition last year, and I\'ve got all singing all dancing photoshop files here that over 300meg in size, and thats before you try open them and expand them. I work on a dual processor G5 mac, with 2 gig of ram. In PS7 those files open stacks faster than in CS2, so as a \'pro\' user I\'m not overly impressed
Plus with cs2 you\'ve the whole nightmare of validation to go through when you install the thing, something you are spared with older versions. Might even have some older copies of 6 and 7 kicking around somewhere, certainly got the mac versions and probably windoze versions as well, If I can find a windoxze one you can have it.
But PS is THE image editing package bar none, forget all your corel\'s and paintshop pros, they are mere Lada\'s to adobes Formula 1!