Mac Forum / Applications / Mac Applications / February 2005

I'm just asking for a little reassurance or advice here regarding where
applications should best be installed?

I understand the basic concept that applications installed in my
computer's primary Applications folder are available to everyone, while
applications in my ~/Applications folder are available only to me.  Mine  
is strictly a single-user machine, however, and will remain such, so no
need to put all apps in Applications.

My non-Apple or third-party applications have all bee installed by
default in Appplications, not ~/Applications; in fact I don't even have
a ~/Applications folder yet.  

So I'm wondering if I should create one and move or re-install my major
third-party applications there.  Possible reasons for doing this:

1)  This way I can back up only my home folder and if my computer fails
in any way, I can just plug my backup HD into any other machine and be
back in business.

2)  If I install various custom manuals, application user notes, and the
like in ~/Library/Documentation instead of Library/Documentation, I
won't lose them in case of a system reinstall.

Are there any reasons not to do this?