I know you are supposed to be excited with the advent of PLR articles, but you are still frustrated, right? I was too, but not any longer.
Like you, prior to PLR articles I had only 3 options to meeting the criteria of "content is King".
These were:
One - articles from article directories. My major problems with this option was having to use the exact same articles with thousands of other webmasters and most especially being forced to include links on the articles through which most of my visitors leave.
Two - write the articles myself. Yikes... like you, this takes too much of my time. I would rather use the time actively marketing/promoting my sites than writing articles.
Three - outsource article writing to ghostwriters. Great option, but it took too much money out of my pocket.
Forget those measly "$5 a piece" articles. Any great and thoroughly researched 500+ word article won't be written by a good writer for anything less than $10.
Do the math--just 500 articles each month would cost as much as $5,000! Certainly not recommended for Internet business where the most important word is "minimize cost and maximize income".