exactly, why do they? It's never the reverse.

The person who thinks a mod is cheating is as silly as the person who thinks you must have a mod to raid. The only question is whether you can do the job assigned to you. Who cares how you get that done. If you can do it without a mod, fine. If you need a mod, fine.

For the same reason that people who play unconventional or "bad" specs. Yes, it's their money and their playing experience, but WoW is an MMO. How players choose to play the game directly effects everyone else who has to depend on them. Refusing to play with addons, like playing a generally underpowered spec, reduces the dps, healing, tanking, leveling capacity, what have you, of the player. Any caster who has played with and without Quartz can tell you how much of an impact addons can make on your dps.
I understand the argument of "If I can play as well as everyone else without addons, what does it matter?" but my response is "If you can play that well without addons, imagine what you could do with them!" So, it's the player's choice if they want to play without addons, but you can't expect me to give them equal respect as someone who understands how much higher quality of playing one gets out of addons, or even choose to regularly raid with them. Blah blah blah, it's just a game, but *I choose* to play with players who do whatever it takes to be the play the best that they can. That includes staying current on patches, reading EJ regularly, and having appropriate addons.
I see the whole "cheating" argument, but addons are not botting, not even comparably. They only reduce frustration or enhance someone's existing skill. If you're terrible, no ToS-compliant addon is going to change that.
...Sorry for the wall of text. I'm kinda passionate about this.

You assume too much in thinking that using addons will increase one's DPS. Indeed, my DPS goes down if I use any addons. Why? Because they use my computer's resources, reducing WoW's framerate even more on my old computer than it normally sits around. And a low framerate will reduce my DPS far more than not having addons will; with a low framerate, it's impossible to get your timing right for casting, especially if you have abilities that proc when debuffs are applied to your target.

@ Alexander Krizak

I find it hard to belive that your computer suffers so much from using addons. I run Recount, Omen, FuBar, and Bartender and have all of a ~10fps difference. I dont know if its your computer, but 10fps isn't going to change your dps.

Yeah, I use 80 or so addons and there still is only a 10 fps-ish difference.

@ Dreamer and mibluvr13

A 10-fps difference is a lot when than means you're going from 12-13 fps to 2-3, as happens with my computer.

@Alexander Krizak

What kind of chip do you have in there? A Dorito?

Seriously, just a few hundred dollars will get you some decent gaming upgrades. Hell, my old AMD Socket 754 (2.2ghz) with 2 gig of ram and and AGP HD3850 video card still keeps 30-40 frame rates in ulduar (and occasionally drops to 15 during really graphic intensive fights, although I cant seem to get better than 15 in Dalaran :D) and I run like a billion addons.

If you still have an older system with AGP video, I suggest getting the Sapphire HD3850 video card from New Egg (its like 100 bucks) at the very least. A decent video card will fix your frame rates.

yet bashing mr alexander a little more... just said this in another collum, but im using a computer so bad that raid leaders dont allow anyone in our guild raids to use non combat pets because that will destroy even a little more my amazing 26fps 800x600 resolution...

and guess what, my dps stays pretty much the same when i have the chance to use my wifes computer (top notch system). yes, it has taken me a lot more to run away from anything (causing wipes form this), but, dps-wise, its pretty much the same.

(btw, running a 6 year old computer with 1gb ram and whatver was the worse the manufacturer could get their hands on that year, seriously, it takes me litteraly 15 min to run from the fp in dalaran to one of banks in there)

Because we're tired of people who don't use addons calling us cheaters and implying that we're morons for wanting the game experience to be smoother. Most of them seem to take a very elitist attitude about it too, I've found, especially when it comes to questing addons. I had that argument one day with a guild member who was complaining about having to look up something up on wowhead. My obvious suggestion was to use the Cartographer quest addon, which is fairly minimalistic but still reasonably good at directing you where to go. They went into some diatribe about how it removes the immersiveness of the game (yeah, because alt-tabbing out doesn't remove the immersiveness at ALL) and how they like the challenge of finding things - subtly implying that anyone who uses them is lazy and a bad gamer. Another day, someone who didn't have a coordinates addon was asking where to find some stuff in old world. I looked it up on the map and told them coordinates. "I don't know what those are, describe it". So of course, I had to spend - literally - five minutes explaining how to get to one point in Stranglethorn Vale. Now, I'd ignore these people if they were whining about it in general chat. The problem is, they're complaining about it in guild chat, and as a higher up in the guild, it's hard for me to actually ignore them without coming across as rude.

I don't care if someone wants to run no addons or a hundred of them - until they start to negatively impact my gaming experience in guild chat by QQing about something that a very simple addon solves. If you don't want to be told a solution to something, then keep your mouth shut.

To use the plumbing analogy by the author - imagine you had a neighbor with no indoor plumbing who constantly was ringing your doorbell asking you to use your toilet. Wouldn't you get pissed off after a while, especially if they could easily afford to get their own indoor plumbing and their own toilet?

Why do people who don't use addon's insult those who do?

They telling you they don't use addons because they consider it cheating is indirectly insulting everyone who uses addons because it pretty much accuses them of cheating.

Nevermind the fact that Blizzard themselves implemented the addon-compatibility functionality etc. and after years and hundreds of thousands of addons Blizzard doesn't say anything against them and actually tries to copy the best of them....

Drop the retarted "it's cheating" argument and no one will insult you.

Note, I called the argument retared, and I stand by that, and not the people. They are just wrong. ;)

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I pretty much agree with and use most of the ones Christian mentioned, except Scorchio (I use PowerAuras), LiveDamage (don't really see the need for it), Hit Assist for Casters (didn't know about it, gonna give it a try) and Opie (same as Hit Assist, but I use Fubar_Portals, so probably not gonna use it).

ZomgBuffz has a ZomgPortalz module that is also very awesome. Depending no whether you're alone or in a group/raid you get a really nice transparent HUD view of all ways of teleportation you have. Portals for Mages, Hearthstone for everyone, the Teleport-thingies for Engineers etc.

Because it's like driving a car without power steering. Nuff said.

I'm highjacking this a little, but there is an addon that i consider essential that you didn't list.

DrDamage

Its a great addon that tells you for any spec how much crit/haste/hit/spellpower will increase your damage for each spell as well as how much hit rating u have against targets of X (preset controllable level), and it works for any class and any spec for those of you who aren't into the magic side of life.

@danawhitaker

I used to get exasperated by people who didn't have coordinate addons too. Then I realized how easy coordinates are even if you don't have an addon. If someone asks me for a location, I'll reply with something like "35, 62" Then they reply with something like "I don't use cheating coordinate addon, can you explain in plain language"

I don't say something like "if you don't want to cheat, why ask for directions? go find it yourself"

Now I say "open your map and start in the upper left hand corner. Go 35% of way from left to right and 62% of way from top to bottom. That should be 35, 62. maybe you'll really be at 30, 66 since you're estimating, but that should be close enough. look around when you get there."

If they still can't figure it out, there's a simple macro they can use:
/script px,py=GetPlayerMapPosition("player")
/script DEFAULT_CHAT_FRAME:AddMessage(format("( %s ) %i,%i",GetZoneText(),px *100,py *100))

(this is taken from this wonderful site right here)
http://www.wow.com/2007/10/25/easy-macro-for-getting-your-coordinates/

@the OP:
In a raid enviroment (and even a PuG) It can be very frustrating when people refuse to admit that addons can drastically improve their gameplay. Everyone I've ever told about Quartz initially tells me their castbar is fine and doesn't understand the use. I have to make an impassioned plea to them to try it (and I'm a prot warrior). For those who don't know, Quartz accounts for latency in your cast bar. It's worth more than any single gear upgrade you can get. If you're casting a 2s cast with 300ms of latency and spam your next cast/ability right as your cast bar finishes, you're actually casting a 2.3s spell. Quartz will make this back into a 2s cast. Gaining a third of a second in this cage is massive. You've effectively added 200 haste rating to your character (15%) just from using an addon. The more normal haste rating or faster spells you use, the bigger the gain.