I have always hated this program … I have always hard-coded my link pages as I think its better … sure it takes more work, but the rewards are there for both participants.
Unfortunately a lot of webmasters are using it and several are not using it correctly, so your inks 3,4,5, pages deep arent even getting crawled!
I tried to persuade others not to use it, but most took the lazy way out and started using it.
Futhermore, I dont think links are that important right now … its more about content and how often you update that conent. Of course a few good links wont hurt you either 