I see your point Dub.
I try to use the infections (they happen to our clients every frickin day) as a learning experience. I learn where they are going, how they are doing it, and how to manually remove it. I google it up hardcore.
If I've seen it before, and as you said, notice that it's a very minor infection, run spybot/adaware against it and be done with it.
I tend to go a little further into the registry than most of my colleagues - it's gotten to the point where I can wipe out large sections without flinching, cuz I know they were created by surf side kick, or the lovable interchangeable always morphing Gator. I can see that pest from miles away.
Also, I use some really neat tricks on IE to fix her up. cuz I can't very well switch them over to a different browser, and our ancient higher ups in platform engineering are afraid of SP2. So while I browse around with an updated IE 6 SP2, with Spybot and Mr. Gate's bought out GIANT software protecting it... our clients are still getting roped into all kinds of spyware/malware. What's worse is they didn't enable automatic updates.
Dub, certainly System Restore saves you time. I guess I only tag it as 'last resort' is cuz I like to figure out how these parasites get in, and how to get them out. It slowly teaches me the deeper workings of what Microsoft thinks is a secure OS - enabling me to 'manually' secure against all kinds of ghouls and goblins.