What's so wrong about using GC.Collect()?

From Rico's Blog...

Rule #1

Don't.

This is really the most important rule. It's fair to say that most usages of GC.Collect() are a bad idea and I went into that in some detail in the orginal posting so I won't repeat all that here. So let's move on to...

Rule #2

Consider calling GC.Collect() if some non-recurring event has just happened and this event is highly likely to have caused a lot of old objects to die.

A classic example of this is if you're writing a client application and you display a very large and complicated form that has a lot of data associated with it. Your user has just interacted with this form potentially creating some large objects... things like XML documents, or a large DataSet or two. When the form closes these objects are dead and so GC.Collect() will reclaim the memory associated with them...

So it sounds like this situation may fall under Rule #2, you know that there's a moment in time where a lot of old objects have died, and it's non-recurring. However, don't forget Rico's parting words.

Rule #1 should trump Rule #2 without strong evidence.

Measure, measure, measure.

If you call GC.Collect() in production code you are essentially declaring that you know more then the authors of the GC. That may be the case. However it's usually not, and therefore strongly discouraged.

So how about when you are using COM objects like MS Word or MS Excel from .NET? Without calling GC.Collect after releasing the COM objects we have found that the Word or Excel application instances still exist.

In fact the code we use is:

Utils.ReleaseCOMObject(objExcel)

' Call the Garbage Collector twice. The GC needs to be called twice in order to get the
' Finalizers called - the first time in, it simply makes a list of what is to be finalized,
' the second time in, it actually does the finalizing. Only then will the object do its 
' automatic ReleaseComObject. Note: Calling the GC is a time-consuming process, 
' but one that may be necessary when automating Excel because it is the only way to 
' release all the Excel COM objects referenced indirectly.
' Ref: http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1346865&seqNum=5
' Ref: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;EN-US;q317109
GC.Collect()
GC.WaitForPendingFinalizers()
GC.Collect()
GC.WaitForPendingFinalizers()

So would that be an incorrect use of the garbage collector? If so how do we get the Interop objects to die? Also if it isn't meant to be used like this, why is the GC's Collect method even Public?