For font management, I’ve abandoned FontBook in favor of FontExplorer X (http://www.linotype.com/fontexplorerX). It’s pretty awesome, and the price is definitely right (read FREE). One of the things I like best about it, is that you can have it move all your fonts to a ~/FontExplorer X/Font Library folder that’s organized alphabetically. Other stuff includes automatic creation of dmg or zip files of fonts just by dragging from the preview pane to your desktop, etc. Def. worth checking out.

Sorry for getting sidetracked and not really answering the question at hand – but the fact is, I’m still looking for ways of increasing my productivity and organizing things after a clean install.

If nothing else, it gives you a chance to re-evaluate what you really use and what your really don’t….which can reduce clutter (at least the way I see it).

Aside from forgetting to backup her address book (oops), and not properly backing up her mail (double oops–I copied her entire library/mail folder and then imported it back into Mail, but the import said “there is nothing to import” when I selected the mailboxes), it went fine. I did learn that 10.3 wont initialize and create an HFS partition over USB…

Based on some reading I did during that Safari “open safe files by default” thing I also created an Admin account for me and a non-Admin user account for my wife, and that I’m glad for (as my only use on the computer is tech support).

So if I can figure out how to not loose all her Mail and Address, I might be OK next time. Or am I wrong to be so scared of Archive and Install on an OS upgrade?

I use another app called ChronoSync to keep my Clients directory containing design elements actually bi-directionally synced with the directory on my NAS. This means I can hop over to my Windows workstation if I need to work in CS2 or 3DSMAX, save files on the NAS, and then sync them very easily back to the local dir on my MacBook. Deletions, folder naming – everything is always mirrored perfectly in both places. Also another form of backup, but useful in certain workflows as well.

But like most everyone else who has replied, I’ve diverted into talking about my own setup and back-up /restore procedures – not really to the point of your question about what I would do differently.

I can say without a doubt it would be better font management. I have some fonts living in the system font folder, some in my local lib’s fonts folder….and well, it’s disconcerting. I really would do a better job of making sure my fonts were collected in my own user directory, along with my font collections. I would like to have a very organized backup of this that I could get up and running with on another Mac very quickly.

Anyone have any tips about organizing fonts? Specifically, where best to install them and how to back them up.

Another thing I did differently this time around was to turn off FileVault. Sometimes I get hooked on being super-secure but then realise later on that it’s overkill. FileVault was just taking up extra space (and time) and was getting in the way of cloning my HD without having to mount the disk image every time I wanted to get at something. Anyway, I am now a firm believer that a lot of security is not necessarily a good thing!

So that’s what I did with my fresh install.

Care to mail me a response? I’m billifer at that wonderful gmail dot com mail host. :)

As for my recommendations to the original question: I like the idea of keeping DMG files for hard-to-find stuff (such as stuff you get a 48-hour download window for), etc., and a text file for the other stuff you want to reinstall. I haven’t (yet), but I really like the idea of synching an external drive for backups/booting if necessary. I do personally using iBackup to backup my app and system preferences to a USB thumb drive on a regular basis. I also like Synk for backing up specific folders (Documents, etc.) remotely to networked drives (SMB, AFS, or even WebDAV); I’ve evaluated several solutions and it works best for me.

As for other essential software that I highly recommend (in addition to the AppZapper and iTerm above) are USBOverdrive if you use anything but an Apple-brand mouse, Camino, Vim, iStumbler if you have need for it, FontExplorer X, OnyX, Growl of course, and last but not least RCDefaultApp.

For other recommendations: Stay away from Softpedia, Versiontracker, and their kith — especially if you’re an RSS addict like me. You don’t have to download every last screensaver, icon pack, wallpaper, haxie, widget, and cute little app that you see. In fact, I’d say that you should keep your screensavers to a bare minimum, stay away from all the haxies (except maybe ClearDock which is okay), and keep the Dashboard very neat and tidy. A couple of widgets are worth having though: iStatPro and Amazon Album Art (which actually becomes unnecessary if you download Corripio, which I forgot to mention above. I currently use only 10 Dashboard widgets and wouldn’t think of a single one more than that.

I think it’s probably also important to regularly run the maintenance scripts to repair permissions, clean system caches, font caches, etc. OnyX, which I mentioned above, makes it really easy to take care of those things which may not be done by default.

If you made it to the end of this, congratulations! :)

The thing that made me the most crazy was trying to update a program from my Work account that had been installed by my leisure account….it was always a hassle. Even when I tried to do everything through the Shared folder, I ran into permission problems almost daily.

I found it so frustrating, that I ultimately clean installed and now only use 1 account for work and leisure. I’m MUCH happier without all the minor nusances….and I’ve also got only 1 set of bookmarks now :)

I, too, keep an ‘archive’ of installation files but apart from apps, I stick everything under the home folder.

The most important thing I’ll do, though, is to set up a scheduled job to back-up my data to my Strongspace account and to an external hard drive. Exceptions: E-mail, which is IMAP anyway; iCal, which I publish to my Textdrive WebDAV account and sync with my phone; Address Book, which is on my Joyent account as well as sync’d with my phone.

Agreed, I wasn’t suggesting that, of course. Tags are evil when it comes to your overall directory structure… Has to be some ‘hard’ distinction between files. I’m just saying put it all in your Documents folder or in your home folder, or whatever, so that when you go to back stuff up you dont have random folders all over the drive.

“I would not organize applications in subfolders.”

Definitely don’t move any apps from where they want to be, except games, I’ve never had a problem moving noiz2sa from Applications to Applications/Games :)

“As much as I hate to say it, I’d follow apple’s folder structure for documents, pictures, apps, etc.”

Why do you hate to say it? :P Apple knows what they’re doing! :)