You can program delay manually by taking advantage of 16 levels and velocity, but it's not quite the same thing, and you can't change variables and modulate like you could if it was an actual part of the efx unit.
i dunno man - i like to delay something manually and let the filter ride out to a low pass. or have a pre-delay that starts from a low or hi pass and rides up to normal...
the more control i have over my sound the better, and at least for the way i do things manual delays work pretty damn nicely. but hey if akai dropped some good effects onto the 1k i'd be happy.
that's why i bought an sp404, to make up for the mpc's lack of effects. i use reason's a lot but that's only for additional layering and synthesization...sound module stuff... now if only roland would ship them to zzounds so they could ship it to me....wtf i ordered that shit two weeks ago and it's not even at zzounds yet.