You know, my father used to love motorbikes when he was young. Since he lived in a communist state(Poland) all he could get were Soviet-made motorcycles, which, as brilliant as they were, had a tendency to die suddenly after ~1000km even if bought a new one. But my dad let me in on a secret - he said that even if you bought, you had to take it completely apart, including the engine, re-lubricate everything, replace seals with a different type, put it all together and then you got yourself a best bike in the world - it wouldn't fall apart from few thousand km, it would serve you for years. He also used to believe that the ability to take apart and assemble a motorcycle is a good thing to learn.

Me? I believe it's great that I live in a free country where I can buy a new motorcycle and not have to take it apart to make it safe to use, or consider engine-building skill to be essential.

And as much as I enjoy working with software, I don't think reinstalling windows just to avoid spyware should be considered essential, or that regular people should have to know how to do it. For your regular Mr or Mrs Smith reinstalling is not a valuable skill - computers are tools which should just work.