Time Machine Value

Question

Am I the only one who sees little value in Time Machine?
Oh, I upgraded to Leopard last Friday morning. And it IS a beautiful OS, and well worth the investment. But in the last 14 months of my MBP ownership, I have never once "accidentally deleted" something. I immediately registered Super Duper and CarbonCopyCloner back then - and make weekly full, BOOTABLE backups in case of a problem... But have never had to restore from them. But I'm ready if a main drive fails.
And I know that external hard drives are at their lowest price points in all of history.
But since Time Machine doesn't create a bootable backup, is its target audience really folks who hit the delete key too often?

Answer 1

{quote:}Time Machine doesn't create a bootable backup{quote}
True but it does exactly the same thing, with the extra security of a fresh, genuine Mac OS X installation that you can be 100% sure of, unlike your clone that might be already corrupted, primary cause of the problem you encountered in the first place.
~ Just reinstall Mac OS X using the DVD, and import your TM backup back when prompted.
{quote:}Is its target audience really folks who hit the delete key too often?{quote}
Time Machine is invaluably useful for those who work on projects that are very often modified.
Of course if your files are mostly a sum of complete and finished files, of which you are interested only in their current state, then usual backup method is fine.
Personally I'm still using my SuperDuper clone for this purpose
(by the way still using Backup too for my iDisk)
and Time Machine more specifically to the files that I need to track in their evolution, or more precisely, the kind that I know very well I'm going to need in a year or two, when the whole thing's become too vague so I don't even know very well what to look for.
Time Machine is not just another backup utility.
You still can use it as if it was just that, but then ok, others work too in this limited purpose.