they have a 1 click root out right now so its pretty easy to do and as for the perks you can use your phone as a wireless router and use other 'root' only apps

 

Well if you're looking for better battery life, setting up SetCPU properly will give you quite a few more hours. It nearly doubled mine. There is also practically no risk rooting the phone itself, its what you do with root that can potentially screw it up.

 

With my Droid 1 the biggest plus for me was theming and source based ROMs...but right now custom ROMs aren't possible and theming is just too risky IMO because there's no nandroid backup. You piss off that bootloader and you're done.

Once I get my DX, I'll probably root it just to get rid of the bloat ... but I'm really going to miss the themes.

 

I paid the 99 cents and got root in like 30 seconds

 

check out the favorite root apps thread here: http://androidforums.com/all-things-root-droid-x/131944-favorite-root-applications.html

 

after rooting my DX, i noticed it being snappier and more responsive. this, and wi-fi tethering, has made rooting worth it for me.