I shoot nothing but RAW on my D40*, so I use Camera RAW a ton.
It certainly wouldn't replace a full RAW workflow. From what I've used of the Capture Pro 4.0 evaluation, it totally blows Photoshop completely out of the water when it comes to working with RAW files. That said, it is a highly specialized tool.
The only real advantage of using Camera RAW with JPEGs and other 8 bits per channel formats is that it combines all of the major balance tools in one place (which is a major advantage, don't get me wrong
). The real advantage that RAW has over JPEG is increased color depth (12 bits per channel for most cameras), giving you a chance to save a slightly under- or over-exposed shot.
*The only JPEG that came out of that camera was the one that I posted yesterday in the Lame Replies thread showing the F4's knobs. The original shot even was RAW, but it was processed, cropped, and saved to JPEG on-camera, then pulled onto the compy with a mini-USB cable, then resized with Irfanview, then uploaded. The things I do to post pictures while I'm sitting at a gas station (it was
Sheetz, so it's okay) using a system without Photoshop (my work laptop).