I used gimp up until about 2 months ago. The multi-window interface takes some getting used to, but overall, it's comparable for many, many things.
It doesn't do PANTONE or CMYK color which may or may not be important to you. Photoshop does a better job implementing how a tool behaves compared to how you expect it to behave. It's hard to describe, but it often seemed like I was using a backhoe to dig a small post hole and with photoshop, it's more like you're using the appropriate tool all of the time.
Plugins are generally free for it. Many lack documentation and many are not production quality.
It does its job, and does it quite well, but between the two, photoshop is more refined and geared more toward the way an artist/photographer thinks about an image.
Photoshop has more online and public support -- there's tons of tutorials. Some of those translate well to gimp, others do not.
I've also not found a RAW converter that compares with Adobe Camera Raw that works with GIMP. Things like correcting white balance and such in ACR I find much easier.
GIMP's scaling engine for on-screen display is superior. With photoshop, things can look downright weird unless you have at at 25% or 50% or 100% view. GIMP's works at just about any setting between 20 and 100 -- no pixelization. I also found it faster to get my images, once in gimp, to production. I spend more time on the resize process with Photoshop, but I'm more pleased with the results.
I used GIMP for about 6 years. I loved it, but I'm never going back unless I'm in a situation where I've no other option. I like having the skill set available to me if I'm working under linux and such. You can't beat it for 'free', but elements might be worth the investment.
... or how much higher than 'free' CS3 is) that's probably to be expected.
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