I'm doing a clean install of OSX onto a new 256GB Samsung 830 SSD. This will be the internal drive for my MacBook Pro 8,2. Given that I'm staying with the same OS version (10.6.8), is there any reason to also do fresh installations of each of the numerous individual applications (about two days' work, including license reactivation, etc.), as opposed to just copying over the Application and Library folders from my old drive?

Also, McYukon wrote you should do a clean install (at least of the OS) because "the SSD has a controller board that decides where the data is best located, on a normal HD data is written from one end to the other. Hence if you clone, you will have the HD's data arrangement which is not optimal for the SSD arrangement." But I don't fully understand this since, regardless of whether you clone or do a fresh install, the data that is deposited on the SSD still has to go through that same controller -- i.e., just because it is present on the HD in a certain arrangement, that doesn't mean the controller, during a clone, has to deposit it on the SSD in the same arrangement.