Hey Peter, it will give you the same code (if it is valid) and has easy lookup (you just touch code number on the screen and out pops a dialog window with the resaon it was triggered....it will not tell you exactly what to fix, just why it was triggered by the ECU.....sometimes it may say refer to the factory service manual (FSM) because it is a model specific code, but only rarely).
You'll see something like this:



The other huge benefit is that you can monitor many of the systems in the car realtime. Pretty much if there is a sensor on the car, you can view it's output on the PDA. This is by far the most useful feature of the Auterra unit. They are not cheap but mine has definately paid for itself already.