I guess if I had a clean install, I'd want to image the machine to save me time on a potential reinstall. but considering I've done one OS reinstall in the last 2-3 years, I'm not sure it is worth the effort.

I'm mainly interested in saving the files I've listed above, and my current backup strategy meeds that need.

If the machine totally dies, I think I'd want to take advantage of having a fresh install vs an "old" image reload.