True Image Technology Obsolete with Vista?

Windows vista is a file-based OS with a new file-based install (as compared with WinXP which wants certain files at certain places on the disk). What are the pros/cons of image-based backup vs file-based backup under the new OS? The ones I can see are:

Image-based pretty much nixes defragmentation of drives (not an issue if always doing full images rather than incremental ones).

File-based software is easier (trivial?) to implement.

Bare metal restore not possible with file-based on XP but is possible (at least theoretically, I don't know what the licensing issues are) with Vista.

(If doing only full backups, there is no size advantage of images over the entire set of files).