Slippers,
You are writing what thousands of colleagues are thinking. How will Datalink help me in my day to day work and will it make my life easier?
It is vital to understand that the present use of Datalink is purely strategic and not tactical. The difference being that strategic use includes non-time critical, routine communications and that tactical use covers basically all the rest where the speed of transmission and receipt are critical for the safety of the a/c.
The idea is to share tasks on a sector suit. This implies that two controllers are on the sector. One executive and one assistant. The tasks that can be done by the assistant are route clearances, squawk changes, frequency changes, confirmations of requested levels etc. Quite some extra frequency time can be offered to the executive in this way. One superb extra feature is the "check mike" instruction in case of a stuck mike on the freq.
As you can see there are benefits to the system and it's needless to say that things will improve in the coming years. Still I'm convinced that voice will remain essential with the present ATC systems for the coming decades.