Search the archives to find my full opinion on the Repair Permissions feature. Basically, it's useful if you're having some sort of problem that you think could have been caused by permissions. However:
1. Running Repair Permissions before an install accomplishes absolutely nothing. Most of the time, the installers run as root (any time an installer asks for your password, this is the case), and a process running as root completely ignores all permissions. So the permissions could be 000 for every file on the disk and the installer would be unfazed. So running it before is a complete waste of time.
2. Running Repair Permissions after an install would only make a difference if you think the installer was stupid enough to actually change the permissions on something important. Most of the time, this does not happen. With any installers from Apple, I would trust them not to know what they're doing. I had a look at the Adobe Download Manager installer, and it didn't seem to change anything other than the Download Manager app itself, so no worries there either. Some people claim that certain poorly written third-party installers can change the permissions of the Applications folder, and I suppose that's possible, but still I wouldn't worry about it too much unless you end up having an actual problem, since a lot of us never repair permissions and our machines work just fine, thanks. If you want to run RP after a third-party install, I suppose you can go ahead if it makes you feel better. But please, don't waste your time running it before. This "advice" is just useless voodoo crap propagated by
cargo cultists who have no idea what the Repair Permissions feature actually does.
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