Locale is great, it's easy to use and has a wealth of plugins to extend it's funcitionality. Tasker is not so easy to use and there are no plugins written for it. So where's the benefit?
Tasker is more complicated, but this allows for loads of flexibility, it's vitually a programming language! No plugins... BOOOO!!!! Tasker supports Locale plugins... YAAAAAYYYY!!! I loved Locale but always found myself wishing it could do something I couldn't make it do, Tasker still has limitations but it's a leap forward from Locale.
Locale only supports entry conditions. This is difficult to explain but essentially it means that when an event is triggered (arriving home, putting your phone on charge, etc, etc) you can make stuff happen (enable wifi, start an app, etc). When you leave the situation there is no way to undo all the stuff you started, there is only the 'default' profile which is the state everything returns to when there isn't another profile overriding a setting.
With Tasker there are enter and exit tasks. When you enter a condition you can perform certain tasks and when you exit you can undo everything you did. This is more time consuming to setup but ultimately allows for more flexibility. For example, at night I turn all the volumes down so a late txt from a drunk friend in a different time zone (you know who you are!) doesn't wake me up with a klaxon level notification. On Locale the levels would return to whatever I set in my default profile. With Tasker I can set a variable for each of the Volumes (notification, ringtone, system, media, etc) and then use that to set the volumes back to whatever they were when the 'sleepy' condition exits!! I can also set it to kill apps I launched when entering a condition which stops the issue of the Locale default profile killing those same apps when at other times when they are launched manually!
The other 'win' for tasker is that it supports more events and conditions out of the box. Yet another are variables, which allow you to set variables that can be picked up by other tasks. As an example I have set a condition for meetings which silences my phone and sends a txt to anyone phoning or txting that tells them I will get back to them when I'm free again. I set a variable called '%MEETING' to '1'. I have another condition that reacts to incoming calls which, if %MEETING is 1, will reject them. This stops my phone buzzing on the table and also sets a notification (with a custom trackball colour!) so I can see who called as it doesn't show as a missed call (although tasker only allows me to program the number into the notification, not the contact name).
It's worth noting there are two ways to buy Tasker. 1) From the market, which gives you 24 hours to decide if it's a keeper and get a refund, or 2) via the website which gives you a 7 day refund period and costs slightly less.
Widget support is better, and more complicated, under Tasker than Locale.
There is also a pretty active Tasker community who post the stuff they've achieved for you to import into your phone and mess about with it, even if it's just to get ideas.
One of the things that used to bug the shit out of me in Locale was that for a given condition you could only do one of each action, this was a particular pain with launching apps, you could only launch one! When I go into car mode (automatically when my bluetooth car kit connects) I wanted to launch my Speedcam software (RadarDroid) AND the car dock. Couldn't do it with Locale without creating multiple car conditions which would then clash and not always load. Tasker can!
Tasker isn't perfect, I've found a couple of things I couldn't do (but given it's programmy nature I may find a way) but nothing like the limitations of Locale.
Tasker is so powerful I don't need most of the plugins I bought to suppliment Locale, it can send txt messages and read things using text-to-speech which would have saved my buying Swiftreply and HandsfreeSMS (I still use them with Tasker, I've paid for them and I'm lazy!).
The bottom line is... if you want simple choose Locale... if you want more flexibility and don't mind jumping through more hoops then Tasker is the way to go.
You can't really get a lot from the screen shots, but here they are anyway:
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