Well the new OS 2008 sports an improved backup/restore utility.
It'll now ask you to backup also the list of applications you've installed so far and, when restoring, it'll re-install them all.

It's, actually, a very good opportunity to test this greatly welcome feature!

PS: speaking of applications, the Application Manager now does not loose the position when re-freshing the list of apps after an update/install/removal (in OSes <= 2007 it was always starting from the beginning of the list. Very annoying.)