I haven't even learned one tenth of the features in CS3 yet. And yet, surprise, surprise, I seem to do just fine. More feature bloat as far as I'm concerned.
I wish Adobe would just create a single program I buy ONCE for $499 instead of every couple years, then allow me to buy only the add-ons that I need at $40 each (for example).
I guess I can't win against corporate greed, and since they have no REAL competition after buying Macromedia, they will keep getting away with these outrageous prices for upgrades.
If you don't think the features are worth the price than don't buy the product. Adobe aren't forcing you to upgrade. If enough people don't think the features are worth buying than Adobe will reduce the price.
But frankly CS seems cheap at the price. $500 - that's probably what 5 hours of your time costs to your employer, the amount of time the new CS features will save most professional users means it'll pay for itself within weeks if not days.
This line of reasoning seems rather lacking.