So my husband bought one last week while he was out shopping.  I found this nearly /facepalm worthy.  We've been playing since original beta.  Why would we need the strat guide?  Besides, it'll only be out of date in a couple weeks anyway.  That's how those things go.  So the husband actually says that he just bought it for bathroom reading material.  And true enough, it has sat in our bathroom ever since, along with at least six months worth of Game Informers, and the Ultimate Bathroom Book. 
 
So one day this weekend, I happen to be in the bathroom long enough to need some reading material.  I pick up the strat guide and start looking through it.  Sure enough, this thing is a wealth of information, and it's much better than I expected.  The guide is obviously aimed at new players - telling them how to pick servers, how to choose what kind of character they may want to create, etc.  But there are some other interesting things too, like a level-by-zone guide, class and spec guides, etc.  Even includes what abilities/spells each class gets, and when, and what they all do.
 
From what I've read in reviews, this guide doesn't give much info in the way of new instances.  But it's great for people who have never played the game before, or who have never played a particular class before.   I definitely found it worth checking out just for the stupid little things I never knew.  (Like I didn't know that when you're swimming, you can press X to dive down... I always just used my mouselook and WASD.)    

 So my husband bought one last week while he was out shopping.  I found this nearly /facepalm worthy.  We've been playing since original beta.  Why would we need the strat guide?  Besides, it'll only be out of date in a couple weeks anyway.  That's how those things go.  So the husband actually says that he just bought it for bathroom reading material.  And true enough, it has sat in our bathroom ever since, along with at least six months worth of Game Informers, and the Ultimate Bathroom Book. 
 
So one day this weekend, I happen to be in the bathroom long enough to need some reading material.  I pick up the strat guide and start looking through it.  Sure enough, this thing is a wealth of information, and it's much better than I expected.  The guide is obviously aimed at new players - telling them how to pick servers, how to choose what kind of character they may want to create, etc.  But there are some other interesting things too, like a level-by-zone guide, class and spec guides, etc.  Even includes what abilities/spells each class gets, and when, and what they all do.
 
From what I've read in reviews, this guide doesn't give much info in the way of new instances.  But it's great for people who have never played the game before, or who have never played a particular class before.   I definitely found it worth checking out just for the stupid little things I never knew.  (Like I didn't know that when you're swimming, you can press X to dive down... I always just used my mouselook and WASD.)    

Torrent?  
I'm just yanking your chain. I would never torrent something.  
NEVER

If memory serves, the Battlechest (vanilla+crusade) gives you strat guides for both.
That's a good entry price + info bucket for new players if those are the same guides.
 
Shame about the outdated thing, but that's bound to happen with MMO's.

This particular strat guide is Cata-ready.  It includes:   

• info about Goblins and Worgen 
• which races can be which classes as of 4.0 
• the talent changes to 31 point trees 
• the complete overhauls of some zones 
• and plenty of other stuff I haven't gotten around to yet because I don't usually sit on the toilet for 20 minutes :)

I grabbed the Burning Crusade strategy guide when the expansion came out and was really pleased with the amount of information it gives you. That was before I found the Carbonite addon, so all of my quest help was found on WoWhead or Thottbot. The guide was nice because I could just open it up to the zone I was in, and there was the handy map with quest explanations. In fact, I think it even helped me find a few quests that I would have missed otherwise.

Some of the information becomes irrelevant with patches, but a majority of it will be good for a long time. Just like you, I didn't think a strategy guide for an MMO would be any good, especially with online resources, but they go out of their way to make a really good book.