Someone please tell me if I'll hate my guts for upgrading to CS4?
I've heard a lot of negative and not so much good, but that's a forum thing.

Anyone out there with similar specs, whats your experience?

Q6600
ASUS P5E WS PRO
8800GT
4G DDR2 800mhz
XP x64

I'm not sure a definitive answer is possible. Reviews seem to be mixed and will depend on the peculiarities of your system, more than just the components. I see you've been over to the Adobe forums as well where the debate is still raging. I'll be upgrading, as I seem to be on the endless Premiere/Cineform upgrade merry-go-round -- which I'm sure is what they intended -- and while I like what CS3 can do I've been disappointed that it isn't any more stable than 1.5.1 was, even on a much better box.

I'm preparing the ground in stages. This weekend, install Vista Ultimate 64, update to 64-bit drivers and upgrade to Prospect for the discount price. Next week, install 16GB extra RAM. End of Jan, when new Prospect for CS4 released, d/l and install CS4 and new Prospect. Then pray it all works. Plan on debugging and running down issues for a month until the next project starts.

The answer depends upon whether you do this for a living or as a hobby. If it's a hobby, you can probably risk the upgrade. My sense is the same as Adam's... still too flaky for prime time.

If you do this for a living, you might want to do a test installation on another machine and play around with it for a while. As long as the machine meets the minimum specs laid out by Adobe, you should get a sense for whether it's worth it. If you don't want to spend the money right now, get a trial. You have to order disks but I think they're only US$15 plus shipping.

I've edited an event that was over an hour, with bonus features over ANOTHER hour and I've had no problems. I've cut a few shorts and a feature as well with no real problems. It's all about keeping your project organized. I NEVER put my entire edited feature film in ONE timeline. It's HUGE and it just doesn't make sense to me. I embed all my sequences into one MASTER timeline.

In the event, I even have nested AE compositions with no prob.

It also depends on if you think the new features make Premiere CS4 more "professional" or just more difficult to learn. For some reason, a reason I myself cannot understand, a lot of Premiere users HATE track targeting and source mapping. I LOVE those new features.

I think the new features DEFINITELY make Premiere more professional.

OMF support, track targeting/source mapping, support for a lot of formats, nice AE integration. I mean, the only thing really missing here is REAL support for SOUND MIXING.

I would say that Adobe Production Premium CS4 is worth the upgrade. WITHOUT A DOUBT IN MY MIND.

But that's just my personal opinion.

Just ask yourself - Are the new features worth the upgrade or am I happy with what I have now.

I will say this... I would NEVER go back to CS3 from CS4. (Not for Premiere anyways). Premiere CS4 MURDERS CS3 in my opinion.

Just ask yourself - Are the new features worth the upgrade or am I happy with what I have now.Hm. When you put it that way, maybe I *shouldn't* upgrade.

For me it's all about stability and reliability. I've never once been in a situation where there was something I wanted to do and CS3 didn't have the ability. So for me, no, the new features are not worth the upgrade, but also no, I'm not happy with what I have right now from a productivity standpoint. They could add no features at all but if they could prove better stability, that alone would be worth the price.

My hope is that the new memory management in CS4, even though it isn't a 64-bit app, will solve the constant random crashing. I'm getting really tired of place clip - save - place clip - save - place clip - save routine. Maybe when I boost the box up to Vista 64 and 20 gigs of RAM all this will go away.

I guess the bright side is I can now tell when it's about to crash and have become really adept at finding the most recent autosave. Don't get me wrong -- I really like what Premiere can do by itself and with its tightly integrated companions in the suite. I have no intention of buying a Mac or switching to Vegas or anything like that. But I'm really hoping to never see that "sorry for the inconvenience" box ever again.

It's really encouraging to see the positive feedback from Paul and others. And there are undoubtedly many others for whom it works great -- you just don't tend to see a lot of posts from truly happy campers. They're probably busy working rather than complaining.

I am going to try CS4 because CS3 has become so unstable on my 2+ hour projects that it is unusable. I will see if it helps.