The installer may still not have softupdates on, but the installer is very very conservative about defaults, and probably hasn't changed since, well ever. However, from the handbook http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/books/faq/disks.html#SAFE-SOFT...
"9.4. Which partitions can safely use Soft Updates? I have heard that Soft Updates on / can cause problems.
Short answer: you can usually use Soft Updates safely on all partitions.
Long answer: There used to be some concern over using Soft Updates on the root partition. ..."
The installer may still not have softupdates on, but the installer is very very conservative about defaults, and probably hasn't changed since, well ever. However, from the handbook http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/books/faq/disks.html#SAFE-SOFT...
"9.4. Which partitions can safely use Soft Updates? I have heard that Soft Updates on / can cause problems.
Short answer: you can usually use Soft Updates safely on all partitions.
Long answer: There used to be some concern over using Soft Updates on the root partition. ..."