Meta description and keyword tags still useful?

[althoffm]

Is it still useful to use meta description and meta keywords in content items? Most major search engines are dropping them or giving them not many weight. Google indexes the description from the first part of the text to show at the search result as description. I have recently bought the SEF patch and want to use it soon on our new web site but we have about over 150 articles and it is a hell of work adding them.

[joomlatwork]

Yes, Can be worth applying these tags to the important (entry) pages of your website. Google sometimes uses the META tag description for the displaying the summary and if the META tags reflects the content in can't harm and have only a positive effect. I agree that it is a lot of work for all the content pages, therefor focus on the most important pages (entry  / doorway pages).
If you have download the latest version you can by the URL functionality fetch the content of the specific pages and you will see the most used keywords and keyword phrases which you can assign to the specific META fields.

Regards,

Richard