The real answer, whether you wish to use the User-Starup or not is to maintain backups. Personally, I prefer to have the user-startup as a seperate entity than the startup-sequence.
In fact, I've had and used (pre-gfx card Amigas) requestchoice from the startup-sequence to heavily modify things by using multiple user-startups. A great Usage for this sort of thing on a native-gfx (or scandoubled) Amiga is the ability to make changes to the very look and feel of the OS.
For example: I used multiple user-startups to control:
def-icons (which icons got copied to env:)
preferences (have multiple default mui/reaction prefs)
backgrounds (more preference files that can be copied around).
Birdie prefs
Visual prefs
EVEN the location of the FONTS: assign was adjusted according to these "extra" user-startups.
I had everything from a bare-bones to a fully-custamized WB based on a request-choice in the startup-sequence controlling *which* user-startup to use.
:-)
