Hi Burt,
Just want to add my support to Nate's comments.
My partner is the graphics whizz here, and she uses both PSP 6.0 and PhotoShop 5.0 extensively both at work and on our own site.
She says there are small differences, some things one program does which the other doesn't. Which is why she uses both, depending on the task at hand.
Her default choice is PSP though, and she wouldn't be using PhotoShop at all if her employer hadn't paid for it. My opinion is that PhotoShop isn't worth the significant extra cost [$700!
] unless you're going into professional graphic work - in which case you'll probably need both programs.
Of course there might be something significant in the new PhotoShop 7.0 - I think I've seen 1 [or is it 2?
] posts about that somewhere ...