Well, in my honest opinion (no offence), Fantastico makes people lazy...for me installing scripts my self is better because I know what am I really installing..plus i'll get to learn chmodding, .htaccess stuff along the way... My Webhost has cPanel with Fantastico but I never use them....
Eventhough I recommend fantastico for end users who is not much expertised in script installation, I prefer to go for latest stable installation which is available.