It doesn't matter if you use Windows, Mac, Linux or some other flavor of desktop OS, there's nothing like a clean installation to clean up the now unused applications you've acquired during the course of the year, various program bugs, messy registries, etc.
My current 2-1/2 year old desktop has 4 cores of Xeon and 9 GB RAM, 4 ports of DVI with 512 MB per pair, and 5 TB raw storage, so it's perfectly serviceable for a while yet.
I spent possibly too much of the weekend creating a clean build of my primary desktop OS and prepped it with all the most frequently used apps, updates, some software I plan to review over the year, and some personalization. I bit the bullet this morning and cloned the new image OS to my desktop PC and have finished adjusting things specific to my office environment to get it dialed in.
While a fresh install is always going to cause a little bit of pain for a couple of days to sort out form-remembered passwords, configurations, and such, it feels much like a car or motorcycle with a tune-up and fresh tires. It may not be totally familiar but it runs so much faster, smoother, and efficiently that the tradeoffs are well worth it.
In 2009 my desktop saw a major operating system upgrade which went just fine and maybe it's psychosomatic but I sure like the feeling of a fresh OS on my desktop. The computer is just flat fast and responsive now!
I didn't completely blow away the previous installation, I actually kept that on a separate partition and imported my documents and media after I logged on to the new OS installation. I didn't copy over all my settings though as problems often lie in some of those settings (on a Mac, Preferences and Library areas, on Windows, the user registry). I have them in case I need them but I really try to avoid using them if necessary to keep things clean. I also revised my application layout on my desktop monitors (and I cheated, I brought in a 4th unused monitor and added it to my desk). I have my furthest from direct view monitor (furthest left) running music/media and an RDP session to a computer I'm watching for issues, another (closer to line of sight) running mail, RSS, and chat programs; the one next to it running my current apps (including my blog editor as I type this) and my Dock/Taskbar; the monitor to the right contains my browsers and my terminal sessions. We'll see how this goes but so far it feels pretty good.
New year, new computer (or at least OS)! Next step is to clean my desk & office!
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