It's also a bit annoying if you have a companion that will only follow you if you have neutral karma, then you're separated from them by the game (e.g. the main quest) and can't get them to follow you again until you get your karma back to neutral!
This means if you're playing as a good or evil character you basically have to do stuff out of character just to get a companion back!
Well, isn't travelling with a companion whose alignment is significantly different from your own out of character anyway? An evil character isn't going to want to hang around with Star Paladin Cross, for example. I kind of think they should have made it so that companions would leave if your karma strayed too far from theirs.