What are the pros and cons of storing files in a database?

I'm writing a php application and was wondering if it's a bad idea to store complete files in the database. Files should be around 100-200kb mostly text files (txt, doc, docx and so on) or small image files. Or is it just a plain wrong idea?

It really depends on the situation?

How the files going to be distributed?
Are the files used standalone or are they part of an system which might have its own authorization and authentication logic?
Whats your backup strategy?
Do you need replication?
Do you need to support a lot of I/O?
What about caching?

Having said that, I would lean toward some kind of filesystem for documents over a database.