More Than 3 Out of 4 Enthusiasts Reject Windows 8
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Choose your own solution but more recent images have saved me much effort in the past. I consider relying on a "pristine" image alone illogical. I am speaking from experience.
Think it through and take the advice you consider sensible and best of luck.:)
mjf it's not illogical at all, it's just a matter of priorities. Both ways have their good points. Not sure what you call "pristine", but if you read my post, my images include all my software, all drivers, and all the MS updates at that time. That doesn't leave too much to catch up on, and 3.0 flashdrives make short work of downloading data.
Granted, periodic imaging indeed will save you some time, and if time is of the essence I understand your reason for doing it that way.
In my case, saving a little time is not the driving factor, and I know my image has not been subjected to "creeping corruption" as greg put it.
It's just a matter of personal preference is all.
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I am still using Win 7 Home Premium as I find Win 8 difficult to navigate. Love Win 98 SE to ME, toyed with XP Pro.
Good for full registry backup unlike Win7.
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mjf it's not illogical at all, it's just a matter of priorities. Both ways have their good points. Not sure what you call "pristine", ..............
In my case, saving a little time is not the driving factor, and I know my image has not been subjected to "creeping corruption" as greg put it.
It's just a matter of personal preference is all.
First look "illogical" up in a dictionary. The use of the word "pristine" was used from the comment of a previous member - the meaning is obvious. It means the first image after a clean install with the then applications installed.
As to gregrocker's "creeping corruption" - I haven't much of a clue what this supposed to mean. I personally run malware scans using a number of reputable software all the time.
Let us just agree to disagree. I along with gregrocker are not the font of all knowledge. However, regular imaging (at least once a month) would be recommended by many experienced members of this forum. To keep one base or pristine image (call it what you will) alone is illogical and poor practice.
Do what suits you.
PS: this discussion probably should be in the backup & Restore sub forum.
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I don't use images to do what System Restore is meant to do and does fine. I use images to apply my customized install to the target or any other PC in minutes.
Creeping corruption is the main reason many enthusiasts in days of yore did regular reinstalls and still do. With a baseline image you get your customized reinstall in its untouched or pristine state.
Nothing illogical about that, just another way of doing things. 
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I don't use images to do what System Restore is meant to do and does fine. I use images to apply my customized install to the target or any other PC in minutes.
Creeping corruption is the main reason many enthusiasts in days of yore did regular reinstalls and still do. With a baseline image you get your customized reinstall in its untouched or pristine state.
Nothing illogical about that, just another way of doing things.
I've had bad luck with System Restore not working so I prefer images. Of course, YMMV.
I totally agree about using a baseline image to go back to square one (1.5?). It saves having to do a clean install and apply all the tweaks all over again. Although I have baseline images for both of my machines, I've yet to actually use them since both are still pretty new.
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I've had System Restore failures
I've had bad luck with System Restore not working so I prefer images. Of course, YMMV.
I've had ~30% of System Restore attempts fail.
Most of those were on XP though.
I've had 2 failures on W7.
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I've got heaps of OSes, some MS, many not. Some are open-source, others are not. Some are free, some are not.
But none of them are pirated. I have legitimate product-keys for all my MS stuff except for the really old MS products which don't require a product key. I still have the original disks for them, so I'm covered there as well.
So, if I can manage to run all those, legally, one would think someone would be able to manage one OS without needing to pirate it. It's not as if legal copies, especially of XP, are that hard or expensive to source.
It can't be that hard. Surely.
Wenda.
Likewise. Everything I have is paid for. No pirated stuff. I don't want any of the nasty little surprises that come free of charge. If you can't afford to purchase a M$ OS there are plenty of Linux Distros that will work on XP and older machines. A good and worthwhile upgrade for XP users with older machines that cannot run 7 due to no drivers for old AGP video cards etc or limited RAM.
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I've had bad luck with System Restore not working so I prefer images. Of course, YMMV.
I've had ~30% of System Restore attempts fail.
Most of those were on XP though.
I've had 2 failures on W7.
There seem to be many different reasons for restore points to either disappear or to fail. If you depend on restore points, you are liable to get stuck. That's why I prefer images that I can manage myself.
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When I tinker I use restore points when needed and with Windows 7 I haven't had any problems.
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I gave System Restore away a long time ago because they are simply flaky. System imaging is robust and efficient provided you have sensible sized OS partitions. I strongly recommend regular imaging. Even if System Restore worked properly would it help with a malware problem?
Also disabling system restore is recommended practice on an SSD.
It takes me less than12 minutes to do a system image and that is the way I will ensure I have a reliable fallback position. To newcomers treat system imaging as your best get out of jail card.
I'm interested in more information on "creeping corruption".
