The next biggest frustration is the way it folds empty lines. If you have a paragraph followed by an empty line, when you fold the paragraph, the trailing empty line will get folded as well. This makes it practically impossible to have empty spaces in your outline. Trying to make it work will result in madness for your average user.
Just relenting on those 2 issues and allowing org mode it's own way will go a long way to making it easier to use, I've found.
The main benefit I've found for using org mode is being able to write up TODO lists and then easily move everything around by folding it and cutting and pasting. Also being able to change the organization by easily changing the hierarchy is amazing. I know of no other application that allows so much ease of change.
After that, the spreadsheet capabilities are really quite interesting. I've actually implemented full on XP-style planning lists with automatic velocity calculation in org mode -- complete with automatically generated burn down charts.
Of course, other people use org mode for completely other uses. This is just what I end up using it for.