Disadvantages (and Advantages) Of Non-root VPS

I've been leaning toward going with WestHost for a medium-sized project. They offer VPS without root access, though, and much of the advice in the "HOW TO: Secure and Optimize your VPS" thread requires running commands as root.

My experience has all been with colocating my own servers in a data center, with everything accessible when I log in as root (though of course I ordinarily logged in as a normal user instead). This was three or four years ago, and a lot has changed since then.

Can someone who's up on this stuff please describe the pros and cons of non-root VPS service such as WestHost provides? Cost seems to be one advantage :-} and I imagine it's wise for inexpert Webmasters not to have a completely wide-open system. Are there other pluses to non-root VPS that aren't as obvious?

Most importantly, what kind of operations will I not be able to carry out if I go with WestHost or a similar non-root VPS host? Can I reasonably expect the hosting service to perform the kind of locking-down described in WHT's tutorial on VPS security?

I'll be asking similar questions of WestHost's support people but thought it would be a good idea to ask people without a stake in either the root-access or the non-root way of doing things.