Indexed images are worthless, unless your main concern is harddisk space.
Just because that may not of much worth to you, I'd hardly say it's worthless.
There are other implications of this inability to load RLE compressed (apparently) images as well: for example, if you create any program that allows the user to supply their own media, or something like a paint program, it sure would be nice if you can read the particular file that a user may present without just blowing up.