buzzbishop
on - last edited on by
ElizabethS
Like many people getting ready for Back to School, I took the opportunity of the changing seasons to upgrade my tech. I've moved from a nearly 5 year old MacBook to a shiny MacBook Pro.
My old white box was a beast for the past few years, but the ports were starting to get finicky, the fan was working overtime to cool things down and, well, it was just time for an upgrade.
If you've done the same this fall, setting up your new system is an absolute breeze.
I got a deal on a second hand MacBook Pro and despite it being all fresh and clean before I got it, I wanted to make double sure, so I wiped the hard drive and reinstalled Mac OS X (Snow Leopard) from scratch with my own disk.
2. Migration Assistant
This is a brilliant Apple feature that seemlessly transfers your files and settings from one Mac to another. You can do it via Firewire, Airport, through Time Machine or from an external drive.
I chose Airport and that might have been foolish - with 300 gigs of data to transfer between my machines the task took nearly 72 hours of constant bit and byte flow to get done. You'd want to choose one of the wired options to get the data over quicker.
3. Check for updates
Despite the fresh install of the OS, there have been updates to the system since the cd release. Getting the updates will make sure all your files sync with the latest software (for example, I couldn't access my iTunes library until the update was done)
The entire Migration Assistant procedure is laid out cleanly in the Apple Support pages.
You can easily move files from a Windows machine to a new Mac too (just know that not all programs or files will be compatible between the operating systems).
The best part about the Migration Assistant is that after rebooting my new system it looked exactly like my old system. Files were in the same place on the new desktop where they were on the old one. It was like hiring movers to not only pack up your house for the move, but unpack it and put everything where it was supposed to go.
You hear "it just works" from people a lot when talking about the Mac, this is one of those scenarios.
