Directory Listing, Is it really worth it?

All SEO guys know what Directory Listing is where all of them might have done Directory Listing at one time or the other :)
Though there are a lot "new & attractive" things in SEO now and SEO guys these days adopt a mixed strategy of the various techniques for their projects, the undercurrent (which I have observed at times)is that people start neglecting Directory Submission activities with more emphasis on the other techniques.
In my opinion Directory Listing is one of the most effective technique for getting the site the desired place in search results. Submissions in relevant and good PR pages works wonders as it shows the Spiders that the site "sits" good on the factual and advantage grounds in other sites too. This also enables getting good traffic and Search Engines always respect such sites. Directory Listing in sites having a "dofollow" attribute are really effective. Let me point out here that some good Directories giving paid link services are really helpful to a great extent. (The same is with Article Submission sites too!). At a considerably low cost your site link would show up in top slot in the particular Directory and the keywords being "sensitive" for such links, your site would be among the top listings in search results. Such Listings make the keywords important for Search Engines and this means a definite advantage as the keyword that you worked on is considered as "important" by Search Engines !
As they say, there is nothing like free lunch, the same goes with good SEO practices. Good Directory Submissions mean that they are relevant, clean and enjoy preference over the "free" ones !