New
#11
Just to throw my $0.02 into the ring...
1). I believe that there are quite a number of people who are likely infected or have a certain amount of unknown malware/spyware on their PC. Most likely as an end-user they are unaware of it, since it's not making itself obviously known. But just because your PC isn't crashing, and files aren't trashed...doesn't mean that your privacy, security or box isn't being used for nefarious means. And an image might prove very useful when you get infected with something and it's quite obvious. But how do you know that there isn't something lurking in your past 20 images that you simply keep restoring over and over again?????
2). I have other computers on my home network and obviously other machines on my work network. Just because I could simply lay an image back down on my actual workstation, doesn't mean that I might not have unleashed something potentially dangerous to other machines...even if it's payload isn't noticeable.
3). Resource usage on my machine hasn't been an issue in a quite a number of years as machines are so powerful, ram is so cheap and hard drive space is so plentiful that resource usage is hardly a concern these days.
This topic comes up about once a week and I always feel compelled to share my thoughts. As a very competent home user who does IT for a living for the past 10 years+, I've seen and experienced quite a lot. While common sense and safe habits provides me a huge advantage, it's no guarantee as spyware/malware/trojans/rootkits/bots and all of the other stuff has gotten far more complex over the last few years and simple measures may no longer be enough.