Adobe Streamline like appliaction?

seems like the most compelling reason to upgrade to CS2:
http://www.adobe.com/products/illustrator/newfeatures.html#nf1

also see this thread:
http://creativebits.org/raster_to_vector_software

Finally this is a built-in feature of Illustrator CS2. Alternatively you can "convert bitmap" in Macromedia Flash then paste it into illustrator! Another good part of CS2 is that Photoshop CS2 now supports 'smart object' - in other words vectors.

Hope this helps.

Cheers
Jesse

At work, I need to convert bitmap files in vector designs everyday. I used Streamline during 5 years. One day, I discovered the best tool to do the job: Silhouette (http://www.silhouetteonline.com). Silhouette is by far the best software to vectorize bitmap files. Much better than Streamline and much better than the built-in feature of Illustrator CS2. Silhouette is available as standalone application and as plugin for Adobe Illustrator. The app is also available for Mac or PC.

Livetrace is worth the upgrade alone. I use it all the time and it renders FAST.

CS2 if you have it and only need to do the occassional conversion seems a good bet but Silhouette looks sweet for people who need to do a lot of conversions and are working with poor source materials. It seems a bit pricey but if it is part of your work then it would save you money by saving you time.

Strange how the demo videos on the site are still using Mac OS9 (or is it 8.x?)

http://vectormagic.stanford.edu/ is an online tool for converting bitmaps to vector art. No need to download another piece of software, just upload your image and you can download the vectorized results right away.