the beta (43) does kick mucho butt. As I've already stated, Adobe could have had a open beta program for owners of PS, charged $19.95 or even $24.95 for copies, and made a killing. I make my $$$$ off PS, and wouldn't have had any problem doing that. Instead, they (or some beta tester) leaks it and everybody can get it for free.
Oh well. Less money in Adobe's pocket...
As for it jumping to version 7, I'm not entirely convinced the new features warrant going to 7.0. Maybe I'm just spoiled by the jump in features from 5.5 to 6.0, but the new features, while very good and appreciated, don't really seem like they warrant going to 7.
The File Browser is nice, but come on - with OS X and WinXP you basically have all this functionality (thumnails, image size, file type) available in each OS' file navigation system. Having it inside PS is nice, but nothing ground breaking.
The new spell check and find/replace type tools are nifty, but again, not really ground breaking. Same goes for the Heal tool. The Texture Maker is a nice addition too.
I guess the new tools are just really enhancements to the way we currently work with Photoshop. That's a good thing, mind you - it's just that we've come to expect that each new version of Photoshop feature a change that really makes our work easier (type tools of 6.0 as an example). These new tools are great, but not as revolutionary as the changes we got in versions 3-6.
I guess Photoshop has developed in to such a great application that now instead of new releases being revolutions - they are more like evolutions.
Either way, Photoshop 7 is awesome. I really hope Adobe can't get this out the door before February!