I find uvlayouts relax/optimize function to be superior to max when it comes to minimizing distortin (2nd only to DeepUV, which has its own problems), but that's about all I use the program for sense, like MightyPea said, it's interface is horrid.
I liked uv layout because of the symmetrical uvs. It does the pelt that max does but pretty much automatic no playing with springs. It was really fast. I did revisit the pelt in a max after playing with uvlayout and got better results with pelt in max. Alex
It's pretty simple and self-explaining. But it can't really do the job on its own, you gotta use it with something else so you can rearrange the shapes and fit them better on the map. Yet for free, it rocks. Only thing is, if I had the money, I'd drop it and replace it with UVLayout.