Reinstall Mac OS X?

This is a pretty tentative plan, but I'm hoping to reinstall my mac os x in the christmas holidays when I have a bit more time. There's going to be a lot of preparation work, however, since I want to keep some (but not all) of my application preferences. So even if I had time machine back up all my system files I don't want to put everything back (since that would pretty much negate me reinstalling mac os x). This time I'm going to get a hold of a 10.6 disk (since my computer came with 10.5) so I won't have to do the upgrade to 10.6 manually. Now you might ask, why do you want to reinstall mac os x?



How in the world can spotlight take 500 MB virtual memory just by itself? That too has perplexed me. But the main reason I want to reinstalled was that I realized today that my computer could be a lot faster. I was trying out the new macbook pros 13'' (with the same processor as my current computer, might I add) and it was so much faster. Now you might say that the new mbps come with 4 GB RAM while mine only has 2 GB, but still. I don't think RAM should affect loading applications (unless you don't have enough free ram I suppose). So hopefully I can get everything together to have Mac OS X installed but we'll see. I haven't tried out a lot of apps recently (Though I did try out omnidisksweeper today and I found out it wasn't that particularly useful for me), I am quite interested in ilife '11 and when I get my hands on a copy of it I might make a short review. Though note that my main focus is on iPhoto since I don't use iMovie a lot anymore, nor do I use garageband/idvd/iweb.

Edit: I also realized looking at the screen shot that the finder was using more memory than firefox and word for some reason. Very strange indeed (by the way I still want an improved finder in 10.7).