SuperDuper! Question(s)

[dnanian]

That's all there is to it. The manual discusses this pretty extensively in sections 3-5. You don't even have to erase your drive with Disk Utility: you could use Smart Update, or just use "Erase, then copy", since it (internally) uses Disk Utility to erase.

That's really it.

The special excluded files are things like temporary files (in /tmp), your VM swap files, and the like. A full list can be found in the appropriate script, but don't worry about it too much -- really!

And, yes -- your money gets you Smart Update, the ability to save/restore settings, modify scripts, use the Safety Clone scripts, etc... not to mention future features.