Damn! Doubt I've ever gone 6 months without a reinstall. I start getting errors and performance issues and just reinstall lol. Then again, I don't touch many of the OS's settings. The power settings (I won't use power saver
) and the language settings (I need to add more keyboards) are about the only things I change. lol
I do like the feeling of a recently "douched" out computer system. It does feel faster and run nicer. However, it's not really the main OS that's the problem. I've just got so much stuff installed, so many settings applied, that I hate having to deal with all that again. Some people, to get around some of that by creating pre-baked "slipstreamed" system installations to handle all those issues. That's a great way to go, and I'd probably do more of that if I could, but I also have lots of other things installed and their special settings.
Many programs don't automatically work from pre-installed programs like old MSDOS programs did; it's a reason I try to find Portable installations of programs. Often programs don't retain their settings in convenient locations: some are built into the Registry, so they have to be exported out; others are buried deep in the Users folder, and have to be reinitialized; still others, like Mozilla programs, retain the vestigial profile system from old Netscape, which means any time you reinstall, you create a new profile and need to copy all the old settings over. If everything was retained in a home folder like on Linux, it'd be nice.
Even Linux has problems though, but more at the OS level. Canonical is constantly changing how Ubuntu operates, introducing bugs as often as they're rooted out. They also change up the UI and other stuff, breaking compatibility. My biggest regret with one of my Linux installations was that I didn't use the long time service (LTS) version of that OS, because the regular desktop version expects you to upgrade your distribution periodically. If you don't, Canonical cuts you off and you can't even update your programs. Worse, distribution updates suck. If you thought Windows was bad about upgrade, Ubuntu is even worse. I never trust a distribution upgrade, but resort to a reinstall. Fortunately, the user settings are usually retained, even if I have to go through and reassign user accounts. Now I just use LTS versions of the OS and leave it running for years on end (as Linux should!)
Anyone trying/going to try the preview? 
love it!
