Used only in situations where you wish to confuse, impress (When you really do not), or if you're just too lazy to say it all. There is a plague on the english language adding complexity where is is not needed.

Recently (Which is a very relative word) A LOT of acronyms have apeared in the tech industry, adding confusion to a lot of un-educated users, for example "My 466 MHz with 128 Meg's of SDRAM running RH Linux 6.1 needs to be fixed, everything from its AGP video card right to its CPU. My CD-RW is broken, however my original CD-ROM works fine. The software end is no better, KDE is evil, as is GNOME. I'm considering swiching to Win98 & LS, however I'd lose my settings for my HTTPd & FTPd...." (It goes on and on.... For example: In Programming: HTML, XHTML, CSS, OBJ, XML, XUL, C, C++, ASM, VB, JS, VBS, VBX, VBA, MOD, LISP, COBOL.... and so on). You (and I as well) should not blame just the tech fields for the acronym dilemma (they are only a part), legal fields, and business fields are also large contributors (Example: AAC, APC, LLC, etc).

Acronyms are a tool to simplify and not confuse, it should be kept that way.