I personally have had bad experience with letting the camera use its auto-RAW mode.
When myself, Steve, and digitalfailure went out for a day in December 2003, all the way to Anglesey. Steve and I set off at around 5 that morning, picking df up along the way, and we didnt get home until around 11pm/midnight. Long day, LOTS of shots.
I went through them with my gob open. I'd shot in JPEG due to not having the space required to stay in RAW all day (even filled my cards in JPEG mode).
Anyway, the camera had got it all wrong. The shots at night had taken on the horrible green hue, runing all of them. The early morning shots of a lighthouse were very very 'cold' (Leaning heavily toward the blue end of the white balance range). They were all messed up.
I did salvage a couple of them for web viewing, and quite a few of the day ones were OK. But I've been very very wary since, and shot in RAW wherever possible.
Besides it gives me that one extra tweak, should I require it. Even now, with my 350, I find myself tweaking the WB a little before processing it in Photoshop. And the 350 usually gets the WB pretty much spot on most of the time.
Edit : Forgot to mention, it was my old Canon G3 that I used in Anglesey. I suppose I should have had the forethought to meter the WB myself each location / light change, but I was new (still am), and wouldnt have the time to have done that. We did fit quite alot into one day. Even managed a smashing pub lunch, a really nice mixed grill, and they did black pudding spot on
