Project Manager: Why?

Question

I just had opportunity to rebuilt my entire system from a zero'd drive. Upon running Logic for the first time I couldn't help but notice how much faster it launched and how much quicker it was ready to do business than it has in recent weeks. And what was different about the past few weeks that Logic became slower? Well, I started using the Project Manager (PM), doing scans, resolving file references. In short, I started using the PM and I'm not sure to what benefit.
Since my foray into the PM, Logic would load with prolonged PM messages, including "updating tree". We're talking about a few seconds here and there, so no big deal, right? But still, before venturing into PM world, I never saw anything more than a blip of a dialog about "updating tree".
Upon further reflection, I'm having trouble understanding the point of the PM. What I'm going to do is describe my understanding of how I think Logic works, and I'd like to know if I'm missing some big important point of the PM. But here's where I'm at now...
I came to L7 from L4 where there was no PM feature. I lived fine without it. When I saved a song, the paths of the audio files lived in the logic file, just as I imagine they do now. If I was missing a file, Logic's search engine came up asking me where the file was. Simple enough.
When I came to L7 and started using EXS, I RTFM about file organization but blissfully ignored the chapter on the PM. Unless I did something stupid and renamed a file in the Finder, songs loaded fine, sampler instruments loaded fine, what could be simpler? So at this point I'm totally ignorant of the purpose of the PM, yet I still had success running Logic.
So... back to last night and the re-building of my system. Without doing a PM scan, I tested out EXS and was able to load up my sampler instruments just fine. In fact, some sampler instruments that Logic used to choke on (after doing the requisite work in PM to resolve file references) loaded up incredibly fast with no "where is the file..." dialogs. Now, I imagine that this is because the sampler instrument itself contains the path to the required files. Same logic as a song file containing data about which audio files to use. So who needs the PM to keep track of this stuff when file paths are already contained in songs and/or EXS instruments?
The kicker came when I looked at PM today, and saw that it had only "caught" about 5 of 20-odd sampler instrument folders.
So at this point, my feeling towards PM is:
1) it doesn't change Logic's ability to successfully recall audio or EXS instruments
2) running scans ends up increasing Logic's boot-up time
3) running scans may indeed keep you busy for quite some time answering dialogs about which file is needed for various songs and instruments
4) EXS instruments load faster now than they did after hours of scanning/tinkering with the PM
So, someone please enlighten me. What's the point of the PM then? I'm all ears/eyes...
-=iS=-

Answer 1

Hey X-man,
Well... you asked, so I'mma tell ya... [exhales, then... begins]
So clearly there was something majorly wrong with my 'puter cuz the Jeanius had to reset the firmware. G*ddammit if I know what I could have possibly done to cause something like that to become necessary. It's not like I ever tinker with Terminal or any of that Unix crap. OK, OK, I admit it. It's not crap. My inner geek would love to know how to program Unix, but there's only so much time in the day. But I digress...
So yes, it's possible that because the firmware needed to be reset that in the interim my computer was acting funny as a result, causing problems with applications like Logic. But I don't really know that for sure; don't know enough about how it all works to even make an educated guess. For all I know the firmware reset became necessary only after the kernel panics and not before. Again, I don't know enough about this stuff to debug it. And at the end of the day, to paraphrase Bones from Star Trek, "Dammit Kirk, I'm a composer, not a computer expert" (the original line was "I'm a doctor, not a tree surgeon" LOL). This kinda stuff is just waaaay outta my field of expertise.
Anyway, my decision to forego the PM is pretty much outlined above. I don't think it's necessary for 99% of normal, everyday operation of the program. Just like Hyperedit. I never, ever, ever, ever use it. Sure, it's a feature of the program, but I just have no use for it. Can't see the need to either because my editing techniques don't require that tool. So to me, Hyperedit is redundant.
Same with PM. My saving project technique is, I think (hope!!) adequate enough that I don't need the PM to help me link files. All that info is already contained in the song file and/or EXS instruments so I think that to a large extent, PM is redundant (except for the few benefits I described above).
How well does it even work? Well, prior to my 'puter's meltdown I saw first-hand that PM wasn't able to resolve various file references. For example, it couldn't find any of the movie files associated with my various cues over multiple projects (these all appeared in red in PM). But if I loaded up a song, the movie file opened just fine in Logic (cuz the file saves the reference to the movie file). Conclusion: PM can't find the data and that's OK cuz I don't need it to.
Let's say for argument's sake that my computer's pre-meltdown condition led to errant behavior of the PM. The only way I could figure out if PM is working correctly now (on my virgin system) is to run it through its paces. But we're talking about hours of downtime while it does its thing (I think it would be best to leave the computer alone while doing an extended scan for various reason). Is it worth the time-investment? At this point I've simply decided that it's not. Maybe I'll eat my words one day, but for now I'm comfortable with this decision.
And of course the other thing this means is that sonther will never speak to me again... So don't tell him you saw this, OK?