Home Folder question

I have finally realized that my stubbornness to stick with Tiger is over. I'm going to be performing a "clean" install of my computer for Snow Leopard and have a quick question regarding my backup process. I have saved my entire "home" folder to an external hard drive and was wondering that after I install Snow Leopard, if I copy my original "home" folder back will this be the best and fastest way to migrate all of my stuff over? I realize that I will have to reinstall my applications, but, that is not a problem. Any help in this will be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance

Don't copy the entire contents as you will end up replacing vital system files. Just copy over personal files from your Documents, Pictures, Music, etc folders.

Also, you can backup the applications in your Applications folder and then copy them back over as-is, no need to "reinstall" them one at a time. Only exception is for applications that require an installer, those you have to do manually. But for everything else, a simple copy and paste will suffice.

I didn't think system files were saved in the "home" folder? I'm just trying to keep most of my settings for some of my software and stuff like that so it won't be such a hassle when I do infact reinstall

I believe some settings are saved within the Home Folder. If you had 2 users with different user accounts and different preferences for settings in various shared apps, you wouldn't want to have to change them all the time after the other user messed 'em up.