[ale] Pros & cons on encrypting disks

[hscast at charter.net (Scott Castaline)]

Just want to get a feel for the pros and cons of encrypting my disk(s). 
I just created a VM to install Fedora 10 before upgrading my system. I 
chose to use the encryption option to see how it worked in the install 
process and how it behaves once installed. I did notice that the boot 
partition cannot be encrypted. Is this just a Fedora thing or is that 
the encryption key is not present until the initial boot process is 
completed? So what are the pros and the cons to this?

TIA
Scott