Yes this is all normal good practice but is time consuming for the user, even if they understand what they are reading. Then there are the things that happen by combination of different hardware, other software that may or may not be installed.
I suspect that most users will either not have MS Update turned on at all or will tick all the boxes every time for things to be updated.
Yes, I've done this with Ghost, Acronis and others. Again good practice but very time consuming, even though it is largely unattended while running.
Weellllll.........
Try allowing a partition to become substantially full, or have it containing the paging file using defaults. The paging file will grow and shrink and be spread all over the partition. The MFT gets spread around as well especially where there is software that adds and deletes a lot of temporary files. Now try running a disk defragmenter and observe the performance change. NTFS is better than FAT32, but taking care of itself, not really.
In comparison to trying to make fixes using the repair and the console on Win2K or XP, yes. I've used this a couple of times and it is helpful.