Hi gazumped, I just would like to explain to you one situation in which automatic hyperlinks are incredibly unhelpful/annoying. First of all I do understand why most people would want this feature and I do not object to it being the default behaviour, but the lack of an option to not turn it off is unbelievably annoying for people with legitimate cases to not want it.
In my cases, many of my notes relate to computer science/networks/Internet technology. Therefore I am regularly writing notes which include examples of what code/settings/other stuff look like. These very often include Internet addresses/other URLs/file locations/other URIs/email addresses/IP addresses which do not exist and have only been used to demonstrate an example of some concept. Even in the case where the linked item does exist, the link is not wanted, as the text was only entered to serve as an example, and not because I wanted a handy way to get there. For example, http://example.com/ exists, but I have only used it as an example. I don't want a link to it.
Have a nice day