Just discovered probably the only time I would use this "from" offset thing: In conjunction with the "midway between 2 pts" option.
This morning I needed to move something centered between two points and then offset a certain distance.
So I picked the base point on the object, then select "from", then select "m2p", then enter the offset distance.
woohoo
Now someone is going to tell me there's a better way to do that too, aren't they?