[CentOS] When should LVM be used?

In my old computer I have a much bigger hard drive then in this one --
and I plan to hand that old computer down to one of my sons -- keeping
his current drive from an even older computer. Currently the hard
drive on my old computer has SuSE Linux, but that will go. I'll
rebuild CentOS 5.5 on it, but I want to leave some free space for
whatever comes up and also dual-boot Vector Linux. Which, at last,
brings me to the question...

Is there any reason to use LVM on a personal desktop install of
CentOS? It seems to me, for my purposes, that LVM is just a pain in
the neck -- although I've always just let CentOS set it up during the
install in the past.  I would like to be able to use parted to resize
partitions when I want to, and also I'd like Vector Linux to be able
to read and write data to the CentOS partition. Would I be missing
something by not installing LVM, or is this mostly for server purposes
anyhow?

Thanks for any pointers.

-- 
RonB -- Using CentOS 5.5