"The text on the revised Jawa sandcrawler shot is amusing, as the "technological" improvement involved was simply reshooting the original miniature from a different angle."

And that's one of the additions that I think is good. Why couldn't they have reshot the original models likewise in some of the other alterations instead of using soon to obsolete CG. I mean, considering the improvement of the model work with the second death star attack in Return of the Jedi, by 1994, they could have greatly improved many effects shots without "cheating" and using technology that was not available at the time. I'm sure it would have been possible with current effects knowledge to use only 1977 technology to get better than 1977 results. (And most likely better than a lot of 1997 results too.)