Fresh Start restores a machine's configuration at every restart, giving users a uniform working environment each time they start to use a shared machine. Fresh Start allows administrators of shared Macintoshes to provide a far higher quality of service to their users. Every time afterwards, when the Macintosh is restarted, Fresh Start provides a fresh copy of these settings. Once startup has finished, Fresh Start runs for a short time in the background, generating a fresh copy of the master settings, in preparation for the next restart. All the settings are gathered automatically and stored locally, so Fresh Start needs no programming and requires no network to function.
Some alternative solutions require a robust network, and can be quite difficult to set up.
And they can be intrusive while they are running. In situations where the network is slow or absent, Fresh Start is the only solution. For example, it's very useful for resetting demonstration machines in stores. We made two changes from the initial beta version , both of interest to systems administrators. Second, Fresh Start can now launch an application specifically at first restart.