It needs to be said that first class and business seats are extremely overpriced...airlines charge close to 10k because companies buy the seats and write it off their taxes as operating expenses. An individual would have to be rich or pampered to pay 5 times the coach rate for front cabin amenities. I agree it comes down to personal taste, but if money or points are no concern then of course you will take the added comforts everytime. I can make a comparison to cruising...if you start with inside cabins, the cruise is still great. If you ever enjoy a balcony cabin, going back to inside is tough indeed.
Dont take offense FTers but you accumulate airline miles through work or promotions or even milage runs to keep your balances high enough where spending points on the minor luxuries of first class seems like the best use for them. For those of us who don't travel for business and have to hit every promo to get 100k miles per year the desicion is more difficult. Forgive the blasphamy but I have to say it....air travel is just transportation.

Just because you get the first class treatment (treated like a rich person as the term implies) free booze in a quiet lounge and more on the plane, you get to board first, and other than the lie down seats on limited routes/planes a you get a little more comfortable seat with extra (a foot?) legroom, a more attentive FA, more room to store your crap and an amenity bag with pjs and a toothbrush. these things are all distractions to the fact, that like the coach passengers who pay substantially less cash/points, you are herded like cattle into a tube to breathe recycled air for an extended amount of time. We all wind up in the same destination at the same time, you just pay a lot more to do it in a little more comfort. (and dont tell me its that big of a difference, unless you fly lear jets and private charters) I've flown in first and the big difference is the vacation for you starts when you get to the airport, for the rest of us it starts after we leave it.

The people with limited cash/points like me would rather fly free twice to hawaii in coach than once in first. Personally we have done this 4 times, even after getting bumped and upgraded on one leg once. I would like to do it up front but without megapoints I cant bring myself to empty my account for 1 flight. We have time to take 4 or 5 vacations a year and flying free makes them nicer when we get there (nicer resort, better excursions and resturants, more money for souvineers, ect.) I am tempted to take our next trip to hawaii (10hrs from ATL) in coach going since we are excited to be going and with the time change it seems early when we get there, and return in business or first costing 60k for the trip-- doing a half splurge and making the depressing flight home more bearable. Most of our other flights are less than 5 hours so coach is acceptable for the savings to us. heck I sleep through half the flights we take, why pay more to sleep a few feet forward?
It comes down to what you can afford and what you are accustomed to using points for. if we started getting used to upgrades, or take a few trips to Europe in first class we may never look back either, but until then if coach for free gets us there twice we can make due with it.