interested in the pros and cons of gnome-disk-utility as opposed to gparted

[compdoc]

> After a quick google, it's not clear that palimpsest offers me 
>anything I don't already have, but I'm willing to be educated.

Both are great and have some over-lapping features, but have different uses.
Since you know gparted, I'll talk a little about gnome-disk-utility:

Its most useful feature is the ability to view SMART data. If your drive has
Reallocated Sectors, it's time to backup your data and think about replacing
the drive. If your drive has Pending Sectors, you have problems in
communication with the drive that could include cabling or even power
issues. 

Gnome-disk-utility also has benchmarking, quick mounting abilities, shows
your raid controllers and mainboard's controllers, along with other features
that mostly overlap gparted. 

I use gparted for partitioning new drives and arrays, and palimpsest for
checking the drives afterwards. I'm happy both exist.