For a dev server where no one cares about log backups, it is a very good idea to set model to simple recovery. For the same reason, it is a very bad idea to do on production server. As for the log backup, I guess someone has made changes to it. If there is a table, or a set of tables, you want in every database, you can add that to model. But not very many people do. The one update I would recommend to do in model is this:
DROP SCHEMA db_owner
DROP SCHEMA db_accessadmin
DROP SCHEMA db_securityadmin
DROP SCHEMA db_ddladmin
DROP SCHEMA db_backupoperator
DROP SCHEMA db_datareader
DROP SCHEMA db_datawriter
DROP SCHEMA db_denydatareader
DROP SCHEMA db_denydatawriter
This removes a bunch of schemas that exist for backwards compatibility with SQL 2000, but which, hopefully, few people use in practice.