Well the notation lets you tell how specific you are being about a number. Instead of saying "about 1,000" you can say 1 * 10^3 or 1.00 * 10^3 which give different amounts of information. So it's not exactly the same as base-10. And if you're talking about really big numbers, it's nice not to drag all those 0's around. It's just as big a step from .......... to 10 as from 10000000000 to 10^10.
