[General Topics] TheReverend210:
I think taking screenshots needs root as it has quite unrestrictive access to the phone hardware.

Root on any linux system has unrestricted access to every part of the OS.

The way linux works is everything in it is a file. Your HDD is a file, your wireless router is a file, your monitor is a file etc. I imagine as Android runs a fork of the Linux kernel it works essentially the same, so in order to access and manipulate the hardware (which is stored as a file remember) you need access to the files that relate to the specific piece of hardware you wish to manipulate, which in turn requires access to the "root" of the filesystem where the hardware files are stored (hence the name root) which has the potential for someone not in the know to seriously mess up their Android system, hence why root on Linux in general, and Android, is restricted.

About rooting and Nandroid, I was getting a bit mixed up between terms.

Now, basically, the goldcard method on the Hero and simple command on the Nexus One simply opens up the bootloader, not neccessarily gives you root.

Opening up the bootloader is what allows you to install a custom recovery image (the default recovery is next to useless without having the phone plugged into a computer and access to adb(which is irrelevant here so I won't dwell on it)).

You may then use the custom recovery image to flash the built in EEPROM with any ROM you wish. In my case I simply flashed a pre-rooted, unbranded Hero 1.5 ROM. Other people flash whichever ROM takes their fancy, it may be cutting edge and buggy, it may be stable but slow, it just depends what people are willing to put up with.

Nandroid is built into the custom recovery image (certainly into the amon-ra image I use, not sure about others) and it copies absolutely every piece of data on your phone. Backup a clean installation, you will have a backup of around 100Mb. I backed up my phone before trying a 2.1 ROM; it backed up all my applications, SMS messages, settings, everything, and I got a recovery Image around 250Mb.

So to clear things up: No, you don't need root to backup and restore your phone, simply a custom recovery image capable of doing so (although contacts, SMS etc can be backed up without root using an app off the market, nandroid basically makes an exact carbon copy of the phone, OS and all), but with custom recovery images comes the ability for incredibly easy rooting, so most people do, and with root comes better customisation due to deeper access to hardware. For example, I scale my CPU down to 160MHz when it is sleeping (about 90% of the time) so I can potentially go 3-4 days off one charge, but I scaled it up to 528MHz, when the phone is in use. Things like that can only be done with root.

Hope that helps a bit.

EDIT: Incidentally, I'm still running the official HTC 1.5 ROM, as the 2.1 ROM's for the Hero are still a bit buggy mainly due to using the old kernel sources).

Also, yes technically you could restore a backed-up image to any phone running Android, questions remain as to how well it would run said recovery image though. Nandroid backs up EVERYTHING so if you flashed my recovery image onto an HTC Legend, it would downgrade that from Android 2.1, to the 1.5 that I use and erase everything else on that phone.

FINAL EDIT AFTER RE-READING THE POST ABOVE: Nandroid backs up everything stored on the phone itself, so firmware, settings, programs (unless you use app2sd), things like photo's, video's and music are stored on the SD card, so as long as you don't format it, they will always be there no matter what you do to your phone.