in the past 10 years i guess i have 'tried' to cut corners and do my binding by machine maybe 10 times...it has never come out looking good, in fact in my eye it totally ruins the quilt i worked so hard to make look good. the only bindings i have seen that do not hurt the over-all look of the quilt is hand stitched ones.
i know there are people who successfully machine stitch their bindings, i'm not one of them. and even when it does 'work' it still makes the quilt look (store-made) instead of loving done by hand.
i have found when i first started quilting it could take me a week to get a binding hand stitched around a queen size quilt, now after doing it alot i can do one in 2-3 hours...each time you do one you get a little faster..does not take that long to get good and fast.