Yeah, sure, if you don't have a Mk1 then you will get an ethernet connection on a machine that doesn't have an ethernet card this way. The beauty of this software solution though is that:
1) you don't need to drag yet another bit of hardware around with you
2) if it works the way most people thing you won't need to install *any* software or drivers on the host PC
3) it won't cost anything except a little of our time
4) it will give Mk1 owner s access to a lot of the really cool features in Hijack and Jemplode, and at a much higher speed! Do you know how slow the serial connection is?!

And once someone has cracked the tcp/ip over USB stuff it is not so much harder to start getting things like disk mode working. A nice easy to use file taxi! Again without need for extra drivers/software. You won't even have to learn any FTP commands if you are illiterate. Now that is cool :-)

(And I'm sure someone else can thing of some other good reasons to go with this!)