Nifty features like Patch tool and healing brush, are some of my photo manipulation favorites. *Huggs my computer*
Photoshop 7 is a good version to use for just about everything, CS2 or 3 gives you more goodies to play with. Whats nice about Photoshop is (I Think somebody prove me wrong ;p) you don't have to down save for earlier versions like you do for Indesign and Illustrator.
So if you feel you want to try out some of the new features you can bring it into the older version if you feel you're more comfortable with the setup.
Downside, when every new version comes out they stop supporting it, people start talking less about the older version (less tutorials, less general help) and there are usually compatibility issues. So sometimes it's good to move onto the new
