Macbook Hard Drive Fail - Asking for recovery advice

My black Macbook hard drive failed. I booted the system using the Leopard DVD and ran Disk Utility, but the drive could not be seen. I am going to replace the hard drive and do a 'fresh' OS install.

I had been running Time Machine and I know that I can do a full recovery from that, but I would like to try a clean install and then just add my data back in after I am done from Time Machine.

In regards to documents, etc I know what to do, but what about my email, etc. Do I just recover the specific folders and the apps will take care of the rest?

Thanks.

It turned out to be fairly simple. After rebuilding the Macbook, I used the migration assistant to pull in all my stuff from Time Machine. I am stunned at how well it all worked. Thanks for the assist logana.

I am contemplating rebuilding my PC and will spend hours reinstalling apps and hoping that I remembered to backup all my data/bookmarks/etc. Apple still knows how to do it right.