Baker gives you a preview of the texture once it's done so that right there is a useful time saver for checking if the texture is what you want or if it needs a bit more work. Plus you can export light maps, normal maps and every other type of texture channel from Carrara (highlights, transparency etc.) I haven't actually used it for exporting any textures out to any external applications, but with the messing about I've done to learn how it works I think it looks pretty good. Let us know if you want to see a specific texture (one of the default landscapes in the browser) & I'll post an image of it so you can see for yourself.