First, look at the benefits. IF one is prepared for it (with recovery or original system media or both) one gets, at the price of an hour or two, a brand new software load at no cost (which can boost performance by up to 5-10%). Or if you wish, hand the media to some tech and pay the fare and have somebody else do it.
Second, look at the protection. From hacks to lightning strikes to hardware failure to spilling beer into the tower on New Year's Eve, one is prepared for the worst. And a new copy of your system can fix dozens or even hundreds of problems you may not know were present.
Third, consider that in this era of cheapness, manufacturers are not as good at offering reload CDs/DVDs as standard equipment. They can come at extra cost, or often one is expected to get blank media and burn one's own copy with an onboard script, wizard or program; if one forgets to do this and remembers 6 months later, one can only back the system up in its condition at that time and not as brand-new. And a year after buying a computer, recovery media previously available may be discontinued.
Why are OS reloads resisted? For many reasons, none good. There's lack of preparation: to do a reload, one must be prepared to rebuild the whole system, from the base OS to additional drivers and applications, to the configuration of all of the above. If one has not documented any of this, one has work to do (that should have been already done). Then, there's the belief that it shouldn't have to be done more than once. This is uninformed; all system files become corrupt over time due to program interaction, electrical surges, disk location errors, lack of file system maintenance, accidental deletion and so forth. There are no doubt more reasons, but the point's been made.
The moral of the story is to remember that all file storage is somewhat risky. Online internet backup? Great, but there's some security risk there (better than nothing, though). Burning your user files to disk? Great, but the computer itself must be rebuilt with something. The main thing would be to save, build or burn an OS copy at the start. Buy the rebuild disk if you must - immediately. Have disks or installers for your needed apps as well, and special drivers for wireless capability, camera adapters, etc. burned to the same or other media.
All this is more than busy work. It's a free insurance policy. And the preservation of the system (and its value to your work) could be worth far more than the physical computer.
