I've been looking for some good editing software for ages and CS3 is way out of my price range. Elements seems to have all the essentials for editing photos at a reasonable price. The programme loads fairly quickly and you have the option of starting with the home screen, the organiser or the editor.
To begin with, organising photos is a bit laborious if you already have a number of files. Photos can be tagged and put into albums which makes them easier to find at a later date. There are some preloaded tags, but editing them is easy and you can add as many tags as you like and categorise them.
In edit, you have the choice of quick edit, full edit or guided edit. Quick edit has basic features such as crop and red eye reduction as well as bars for adjusting features such as temperature, hue, saturation etc. Full edit gives you access to a wide range of tools allowing you to really play around with your picture. In guided edit, you are asked what you want to do and there are a good range of choices.
One feature that is really useful in this version is the ability to work with more than 1 photo to merge faces or to merge a group shot. This is particularly useful if you want to combine different parts from 2 photos of the same scene. There is also an option to merge scenery photos to create a panoramic shot.
iPhone users can import photos taken on the iPhone into Elements by selecting "camera" in the options.

This is a really comprehensive photo editing programme and is really good value. If you're looking for a budget alternative to the CS3 then this is well worth considering.