They're worth it in the sense that they normally charge an arm and a leg for "fresh" pasta it our local grocery stores, and I hate paying that much for something that is really just flour and water (and maybe some egg). If you pick up some ravioli molds, you can certainly make all sorts of home made ravioli with creative fillings. Or make your own pierogi with a simple round mold and a fork.
However they are pretty time consuming as you've noticed, and messy in terms of getting flour everywhere. I haven't personally made home made pasta with one of those machines since the 80's when I used to make it from time to time with my grandmother. She had a simple rack made out of dowel rods for the pasta to hang from (when we were making stuff like fettuccine). We never let the pasta completely dry to what you would get out of a box at the grocery store, and I don't know if that would even work. I'm not sure how they get those pastas so dry like that - I would be concerned about mold or something forming on it in the process. We always cooked ours relatively soon, within a day or so.
The only pasta I've made by hand in recent years were gnocchi and cavatelli, which don't require any special equipment, and they turned out fine.