There is an added benefit for developers, one that was the deciding factor in MAMEDEV adding savestates to MAME, for better or for worse.
Say you have a user who says: "When I get to level 8 on game XYZ, Dosbox crashed with this error message...". Well, perhaps QBix is not a good-enough gamer to get to level 8? How is he going to debug this? Well, he could use a level-up cheat if there is one, but you cannot guarantee that the crash will be repeatable at this point. Or what if the game offers saves? You can't guarantee that both the user and the developer will have the exact same revision of the game. So the best solution is to implement savestates - or at least incredibly detailed crash-logging - so you can debug the code.
Of course, now with MAME, a change can be implemented in a CPU core and break previous savestate compatibility. So you take what you can get...
However, I agree with QBix's assessment - this is a feature best left for much further down the road.
"I see a little silhouette-o of a man, Scaramouche, Scaramouche, will you
do the Fandango!" - Queen
Stiletto