What could be easier than moving a slider up and down as the song is playing? Granted, I've never used automation during my computer recording, although from what I'm imagining it involving is me having to find the times at which I would want to raise and lower volume sliders and then I'd have to test it out, tweak it to fine tune it, and click with my mouse about 100 times to achieve the result of me taking my hand and moving a slider up and down on the mr-8 while the song is playing. I can see how automation would be a VERY useful thing, but after about 1,000 mouse clicks involved in computer recording, editing, mastering, mixing, etc. I get to the point where I'm ready to throw my mouse out the window.
Now for effects and EQ and such, I end up just adding those to the WAV files in my computer, re-saving those WAvs, and sending them back to the unit.
So I guess it comes down to my subborness to really learn my computer recording programs inside and out by reading the manual for Cubase (which is about as fun to me as cracking open a book on physics), my developing hatred for mouse-clicking (since I do it all day at work), as well as me wanting to "keep it real" by manually moving sliders.