Scott,

Why did I upgrade?  Well, part of it was that incentive licensing took away 
some of the frequencies I could operate on, and part of it was that my 
friend had gotten an Advanced, and I still had my General (actually, 
Conditional license to be technically correct.)  So, part of it was I wanted 
to keep up.

Does it make that much of a difference?  I guess that invariably comes back 
partially to frequency privileges.  And, at the time I did it, there were 
more 1X2 callsigns available.  And, I think having the privilege of a 1x2 
call does make a difference, particularly if you try getting through a DX 
pile-up or work much contesting.  I know my call is a helluva lot easier 
than my old one, W A 8 V A A, to many Ay sound, lol.

Whether it is worth it to you depends a lot on what activity you do.  If you 
like CW, you get the bottom 25KHz on all the bands.  There seems to be a 
fair amount of activity there.  If you like working DX, there are some parts 
of the Advanced/Extra porttion of the upper HF bands that are less 
congested.

If you're primarily interested in general ragchewing or traffic-handling, or 
if you are mainly interested in Vhf/Uhf, and you don't have a desire just to 
learn the additional stuff, then don't go through the bother of learning it 
to pass an exam.  Almost all the traffic handling nets are in the General 
portion of the bands, so you don't need the added band privileges for that.

Steve, K8SP