Upgrade from CS5.0 to CS5.5 Worth It?

Question

If I could get the Warp Stablizer to work on some of my more difficult shots, I'd probably pay the $179 for an After Effects upgrade.   That's the cost of a good plugin.
But Premiere?  I don't really see any of the "What's new?" features that make me go crazy... In fact, I don't really care about them at all.
BUT, I do care about speed and stability.  I'd spend money if it made my work significantly faster.
Does CS5.5 cut down on response time?   Right now in CS5 everything is great until my project gets big, then it starts becoming a lot slower to jump from Windows/Anything back to Premiere.  It lags 5-10 seconds before the program is available.  And of course with a lot of dynamic linking, going to AE for a minor tweat and coming back to see it in Premiere can become tedius if it takes 10 seconds every time. 
I also have slow response time from the time I press play to the time the video plays.  Not at first, but after the project has grown.
Does CS5.5 adress any of this at all?

Answer 1

Well, it depends what you consider "significantly faster." In general, CS5.5 is more responsive than CS5; projects load and save faster, GPU acceleration has been refined a bit, and shuttling through a busy timeline is--with most media--very fluid. I've had some issues with H.264 stuff, though; I'm convinced (or, at least, I've convinced myself) that CS5.5 hiccups a bit more with such footage than CS5 did. My projects use a lot of such media, now--primarily AF100 AVCHD and Canon DSLR. This could totally be placebo effect, though--I haven't done any real scientific measurements. It's not enough for me to decry CS5.5 as "bad" in this respect, because it's not.
There are a few operational enhancements, as you're aware, but if you don't need them or can live without them, they're nothing to go crazy about. I've only tinkered with Merge Clips to see what it does, and the Audition integration is interesting but not something I'm too likely to use for my kind of work.
I'd really suggest downloading the trial and giving it a go; while you won't be able to do anything with your projects that have DL'ed comps (PPro CS5.5 won't talk to AE CS5), you could import one of your other projects and beat on it for a bit. It'll will ask you to convert the project, so it'll leave the original alone. I think the only true way to ascertain whether it's a worthwhile upgrade for you is to kick the tires yourself.
I might not be the best judge of this, since I usually will upgrade within a few weeks of release just because I like to stay current, but I think that on the whole, CS5.5 is worth it, even if it's not bringing a whole lot of whiz-bang to the table.
That's my two cents, but what with the exchange rate these days, that's not much