I used that technique to set a common initial password for 83 users that were loaded directly into the mw_user table. (These are unsophisticated users who will have enough trouble typing their name and the common password into the login screen, let alone creating their own accounts.
I'm facing doing that soon. Are you saying you can do a great load of them in one go? (with the mac software you mentioned)
I got the hang of HTML, then stopped doing websites. I got the hang of GREP then stopped needing it. I got the hang of LaTeX but have no time to write. Now i am learning about wikis and php and MySQL...sigh....