Essentially, if you own an E-TTL II (or presumably iTTL) cable of a certain length/type, is there any reason to also own a manual PC-sync cable of a similar length/type, or can the camera be fired in manual mode via the E-TTL cable.
I presume it can, and so getting a PC-sync cable would be redundant for those just starting to get into flash, and not owning studio flashes or anything other than a speedlite, since it looks like it just maps all the connections on the camera hotshoe to another hotshoe a length of cable away, but I'd like confirmation of this before I disgard the idea of buying a cheaper PC-sync cable to experiment with manual flash before moving on to E-TTL stuff.