Has anyone used this vesion yet? What do you think? I own the 2.5 LE version but didn't care for it. Just wondering what anyone thinks?

It's not bad. They improved it over version 4 by allowing you to add chapter markers to non-sonic encoded video. If you need to do a quick DVD and don't want something that's going to mess up your video, MyDVD 5 is pretty good. I've used it several times myself for samples.

Has anyone been able to do a hands-on comparrison of DVDIt! 5 to Ulead DVD Workshop Express? I'm a Windows user looking for a good DVD-authoring program for under $300, and these two seem to be my best options.

I'm an independent videographer (mostly weddings), and DVD Movie Factory 2SE, which came with MediaStudio Pro 7, is just awful. I've always enjoyed using Ulead's products, but DVD Movie Factory 2 SE sucks. It hangs after I create 3 or 4 chapters. (For a typical DVD project, I import two DVD-ready MPEG2 videos: a short first-play clip, and the finished wedding video. I then use DVDMF to create chapter points in the wedding video.) The freezing never happened when I used their DVD Plug-in in MSP 6.5, but that plug-in doesn't support the Dolby AC-3 audio I use.

System specs:
Hyper Threaded P4 2.8 GHz
800 MHz Foxconn Intel 865-based motherboard, integrated FireWire
512MB DDR400 RAM (256MHz DIMM x 2)
Dual 120GB SATA hard drives
Windows XP Home, Service Pack 1a
eVGA GeForce FX5200 128MB dual-head video