Automatix not worth it

So I logged into my computer at the house last night and launched Internet Explorer. It is set to the Google Homepage I set up since it has RSS feeds for the news on it and that is the only time I catch any news. For some reason an RSS feed from del.icio.us caught my eye. It was a link to Hack Attacks top 10 Ubuntu apps and tweaks. Of course with my project in mind I had to check it out. The url is
http://lifehacker.com/software/ubuntu/hack-attack-top-10-ubuntu-apps-and-tweaks-195437.php

The first thing it listed was Automatix which it claims would get your system ready to play nice with codecs but also allows you to download a variety of other applications. I decided to try it out. It was easy to download and install. There is a link on the page to the automatix website which provides links to files (for Intel or AMD processors) that you click on and open with the default package installer. It installs without a problem.

When you launch the program you get a big screen with red text that states "Please NOTE that downloading and installing u32codecs, libdvdcss2, and other non-free codecs without paying a fee to the concerned authorities constitutes a CRIME in the United States of America" more on this in another post...

I launched the program and it updated repositories and then went and looked to see what I could install. It was a stripped down version of the Synaptic Package Manager. It was easier to browse through since it had less stuff, but many of the items had already been offered to me through the SPM.

I would not consider this an essential tool. I also browsed the other tools available, but didn't see anything really worthwhile except for the command to turn off the system speaker.