Clean Snow Leopard install and restoring Applications

Hi, I'm new to the forum, and only been a mac user since April. I got the 13 inch unibody macbook, 2.4, 2GB ram, 250 gb hardddrive in April of last year.

I upgraded to snow leopard last night and so far no problems, but now I'm debating going back and doing the clean install that certain people have raved about. I definitely notice the system is a little quicker (mainly with the finder), but I'm wondering if it would be that much better. I'm pretty computer knowledgeable and understand how to do it, but my question is in two parts:

1. Since I've had this thing for less than a year, is a clean install really going to make a difference.

2. When I clone my HD (which I will do in ADDITION to the TM backup I already have), will I be able to easily restore everything back the way it is, including applications. I've read in some places on the net that I will have to completely restore a lot of applications from the discs (like Office 2008). Others have told me that you can just restore the applications with the migration assistant.

The reason I ask is that I haven't loaded too much crap on my computer since I got it, however, as with any computer its not as zippy as it was last April. My main programs are the web, mail, iPhoto, iMovie, and I mess around with Garage band sometimes. I'm planning on upgrading to 4 GB of memory pretty soon and I imagine that will speed things up too.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Jason

There's no real point to doing a so-called "clean" install. The way Snow Leopard installs is a bit different from prior releases and bypasses the issues presented by the old "Archive and install" or "Upgrade" install options.
Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6) Review

If you are going to do a "clean" install, then go whole-hog and wipe it all the way down, reinstall the OS, then re-install your apps one-by-one. Simply migrating them back over along with their support files in the root and user libraries so they work as before likely won't put you in any better a situation than you are in now. In fact, it'd be far simpler to just make backup copies of the root and user Libraries, then delete the originals. The OS would then rebuild virgin copies and you can move back any data in the old ones that are really still needed (Safari bookmarks, for example).

But nevermind all that... like I said, it's likely not necessary at all. You'd be better off running some maintenance and cache cleaning utilities. The most popular freebies are Onyx, MainMenu, and IceClean. I like TinkerTool System, which isn't free, but has a few extras that make it worth paying for if the need arises for what it offers. Anywho... run the Daily/Weekly/Monthly maintenance scripts, the cache cleaning tools, repair permissions, and perhaps update the prebindings. Then reboot. You may have to reboot a couple times before everything normalizes as the system rebuilds it caches, but hopefully you will see an improvement. Oh yes, you should also make sure you have the latest versions of your apps. Aim for Snow Leopard compatibility, and consider switching to a more current alternative if you have one that hasn't seen an update since 10.4 (Tiger).

You also might want to consider a defrag. Read more about my thoughts on it here:
http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/os...87952-defragging-os-x-discussion-example.html

thanks for your advice!