Photoshop Elements - how is editing in RAW any different that editing JPEG in Elements?

Ok - i know this question is confusing, so let me clarify.

I use Photoshop Elements 5.0 - I hear from everyone that RAW formatted photos are better quality (and for 10mg pictures, i guess so)

Anyway....if i take a high quality JPEG picture, Elements will give me more than enough scroll bars to fix exposure, highlights, shadows, saturation,etc... When i take a RAW picture (via Rebel XTI) and load it into Elements, many of the same scroll bar features are also available. There are a few more scroll bars and menu items but not tons more.

Alot of people have told me that if I have to ask the difference between RAW and JPEG, I should be shooting in JPEG :) However, it just seems like the scroll bar editing functions are soooo similar between the 2, is there really a noticable difference? I primarily shoot landscape and airshow photography.

thanks for any help

Here is the simple answer:

RAW collects all the data from the sensor and saves it on the memory card.
JPEG uses the criteria you give the camera in setup (WB, sharpening, size, resolution and other parameters) and saves it to the memor card

When you open a RAW file, all those and more features of the image can be adjusted to get the "perfect" image (exposure, contrast, brightness, colour temperature, tint, shadows, saturation, depth - 8 or 16-bit -, sharpness, luminance smoothing, color noise reduction, fix colour fringing, adjust curve and set the camera profile)

As you can see that not only are there many more adjustments that can be used, but you can customize each photo, rather than having to determine most of those factors on-site.

Gee, did I say "simple answer?

i am told that raw files have more information and are easier to work with in photoshop that jpg, i was also told that less is more, the less i have to edit or correct something in photoshop the better.
for me, i notice a difference when i am shooting timed exposures at night if is shoot in raw as opposed to jpg. my raw images turn out so much better than the jpg. but for the life of me my daylight shots are to my eyes the same in jpg as raw.
i will give you a star and maybe someone who knows something will answer

RAW is just that, unprocessed image data.

You get to choose what corrections to apply and how much, rather than relying on the software in your camera to decide for you.

I love RAW when shooting in mixed lighting conditions as I get to choose the ultimate white balance at my leisure when I convert th eimage from RAW to TIFF or JPEG.