In case you are afraid to upgrade manually, try the Instant Upgrade plugin. It worked for me without any problem.

1. Incompatible plugins

Out of my 15 old plugins just one plugin was causing problems. It was Disable WordPress Widgets. I had never liked the idea of WordPress widgets. But no plugin update was available.

So I am now using widgets in the sidebar. A small sacrifice for using Worpress 2.5.

2. The new dashboard

WordPress 2.5 includes a fully customizable dashboard with fresh new colors and a complete redesign to make things simpler. At first looks, the new dashboard looks great but there are some downsides. The layout is not fluid, so there is a lot of space wastage in widescreen monitors. Also the colors used are a bit difficult to read on laptop screens.

The one shot solution for these problems is a new admin theme. Download and install the Fluency WordPress admin theme. Its a cool new admin theme which is compatible with WordPress 2.5. You can check out screenshots here.

3. Multi-file uploading now easy

Uploading files is now much easier. Uploading files is somewhat like Flickr now. You can select multiple files at the same time and see the progress of each file while they are uploading. Cool !

4. Automatic plugin upgrades

Now you can automatically upgrade plugins from your dashboard itself. Open the Plugin page. If there is an update available WordPress will show you. Check out the screenshot telling me there is an update available for the XML sitemaps plugin.

Click upgrade automatically and WordPress will do everything for you.

5. Built-in gallery support

Upload a bunch of photos and embed galleries by just putting [ gallery] (without the space) in your post. It’ll display all your thumbnails and captions and each will link each to a page where people can comment on the individual photos.

Check out Paul Stamatiou’s post using WordPress 2.5 Gallery support.

Thats it for now….. I am still checking out WordPress 2.5.