It is useful. I've even cleaned it a bit up, putting only Assign and path instructions into the User-Startup, adding a new subscript called "ExtUser-Startup", where tool programs and patches are started and another script called "AfterExec",
that starts with a Wait 5, so the rest of the stuff is done after the Workbench has loaded. My startup-sequence has no similarity with the original one. My machine boots into workbench in about 15 seconds from a cold boot.
