Well what can I say? A lot less hassle than hand processing the film, and a lot cheaper in the long run as well, I can imagine. I go through a small door that looks like it was taken from the starship enterprise and fumble about for a few minutes in a pitch black room that is no bigger than my dishwasher. Then I can walk away and let the machine do the work for me. When was that ever a bad thing? The only down side is killing time whilst you wait for your film to come out the other side. Just my luck I prefer colour film, which takes 17minutes.