Actually, these randomized passwords are based off of hashes. Many password utilities generate a random hash on your first use and continue to use the same hash for all of your passwords. It’s possible to reverse a hash with enough data. While you, and me, and most FReepers aren’t likely to be targets, an advanced adversary could very easily gather enough passwords from phishing to discover a hash. Once that’s figured out, your password vault is useless.
Microsoft is actually recommending a transition to passphrases with no complexity. They’ve put a number of cryptographic algorithms to the test and found that human readable passphrases with just spaces and some capital letters are better for account security than a random password. The catch: they need to be greater than 20 characters.
Why? Because long complex passwords are difficult to remember. Even passwords with substitutions (I l!ke d0gs) are easily guessed by password crackers. On the other hand, passwords with spaces and more than 20 characters creates a substantial amount of computational overhead due to the length of the password and the use of things like the space bar. Plus, the password is easier for an employee to retain, thus reducing calls to a helpdesk.