Can be misinterpreted. Also, MS Internet Explorer 4.0 allows the user to shut off the status bar. It can be pretty cool. Convenient to setup for one graphic instead of many little ones. Can be very powerful in communication.
Biggest disadvantage is if users have their graphics turned off - the image map is useless.
Image load time is a factor. To a search engine spider, and image is worth nothing. On more than one site, I've become frustrated playing find the link and left. Also, waiting for a 100K image map to download is traffic suicide. More flexible than image maps.