Reformat and re-install Lion

I have installed Lion over the top of Snow Leopard on my Mac Book Air, but I am having a lot of trouble with various apps and would like to do a disk format and clean re-install.
Reading around the subject, it seems like there are various ways to do this, but the best would seem to be this (as discussed here: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4718):
- Boot into Recovery HD using command+R
- Choose Disk Utility and reformat the Mac main drive
- Exit Disk Utility and then choose Reinstall OS X Lion - am I right in thinking that it will now need to go and download the Lion installer from the internet (which obviously could take some time)?
- Once complete, can I restore the things I need from the most recent Time Machine backup? I will do one just before I start the process. I also plan to do a manual copy of the data files I need.
If anyone has done this before and can confirm the above process, that would be great...
Many thanks.

jamesfromshropshire wrote:
Once complete, can I restore the things I need from the most recent Time Machine backup?
If you mean 3rd-party apps, individually, in some cases yes, in others, no.
See Transferring Applications for an explanation.
I also plan to do a manual copy of the data files I need.
If you mean drag & drop from Time Machine backups, that's problematical, especially if you have non-standard permissions, such as for multiple users. Your best bet is probably to use the "Star Wars" display, per #15 in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions.

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Reformat and re-install Lion

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