Complaint: Animated GIF, Photoshop CS4

I am a freelance print designer. Needless to say that I have upgraded to the Design Standard Edition of the Creative Suite 4. Still, some customers ask me to do their web banners, too.
Fact 1:
There is an animation palette in Photoshop CS4 Standard.
Fact 2:
You can create animations with that palette.
Fact 3:
You can save the animation as an animated GIF.
Fact 4:
Opening the animated GIF, you only get the first frame, so you cannot edit the animation or content inside the GIF.
Fact 5:
I need to alter a few animated GIFs which I created several years ago using Photoshop CS2. Due to a harddrive crash, I don't have access to the original layered PSD files any more.
Fact 5:
Photoshop CS4, the most advanced image editing tool on the face of the earth, is absolutely useless at this point, and I have to find freeware or shareware to do the job. Finding and purchasing this sort of software is MY time, and that is MY money.
Whatever drove Adobe to cripple Photoshop CS4 Standard, whatever drove them to expel the simple "Open Animated GIF" feature from Photoshop CS4, it was the wrong decision.
This, Adobe, is a customer complaint. Take it serious. There is competition, and I hear a lot about GIMP these days.
Frustrated,
Gero

I know this thread is getting on a bit now, but I do have the answers.
Quite simply, as far as I can tell, this cannot be done without Quicktime installed.
To open an animated gif in CS4 on a PC:
1. Go to File->Import->Video Frames to Layers
2. In the File Name box type “*” ( or you can type the name manually) The window will now show every type of file
3. Select your gif and you are done
To open animated gif in CS4 on a MAC:
1.  Go to open, select your GIF, then in the bottom left corner of the open file dialogue box select Quicktime Movie as the format, then open your GIF.
2.  You’ll need to open your animations window by going to window -> animation. This will bring up the time line.
3.  If you want to have all of the frames broken up into layers, click the options in the animation window, and select “Flatten Frames into Layers”.
This will give you access to all the frames as layers and you can now edit the GIF as though it was a movie.
I hope this helps to ease somebody's frustration.

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