the only differance you are looking at is speed, and w/ your awk statement you are specifing exactly which fields you want to keep and not keep. you can do w/ the same thing w/ cut saying which fields you dont want.

Personaly i would take my method vs the current awk statement due to not to be mean but its an eye soar. When i first started doing scripting i did it the long way (that awk statement) now i find i am able ot do the exact same thing but shorter and quicker, and much faster to read thru for errors. IMHO