Transfer to new laptop

Migration Assistant gives you a choice of what you want to bring over. I used it for the first time today. In my case I wanted to bring everything over, but there is a step where you can uncheck what you want to leave behind.

It's kinda hard to say whether you should leave your old Dell files behind. What are they? If they are old letters, spreadsheets, and other work product documents that you created, only you can say whether they should come over. It is unlikely that you have apps there, and even if you do, copying them over won't really hurt anything (only take up space).

Some apps you bring over may not work or may require an update. You can approach it one of two ways. You can build a list of all your apps and go to each app website to see if they have updated versions, or do what I do - bring it all over, and launch each app to see if it works. Most have a "Check for updates" option and sure enough most of them do.

Good luck!

oldcelt said:

I have just heard that my new Air has shipped and while I wait impatiently, could some of you more experienced people help me get ready. I am 59 years old and self-taught regarding techie stuff, so be gentle with me!
My questions will show my ignorance.
At the moment have a 2007 Macbook Pro. I want to transfer my important stuff to the new Air, but not sure of the best way to do this. I am sure there are many unnecessary files on my computer, which I don't want.
I know there is migration assistant but don't want to move everything.
Also I want to delete some files but am not sure how vital they are.
I have a file called 'migrated pc files' which I assume are the remnants of my old Dell - can I just delete this??? Any things I should NOT touch???

Help please.

Click to expand...

I would use Migration assistant for the first import and then tidy your files from there, if you go the selective route, you may well miss important stuff and MA is pretty easy to use, as it will walk you through the process when you get your new Mac.

Once completed, you can then have a general tidy up, removing things you do not want or need.

The other alternative is to skip the Migration assistant and use something called "Target Disk" mode to make the transfer....This requires a cable connection between your old Mac and the new one:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.6/en/8443.html


You will need a firewire cable if you choose to go down the TD route.

Because I have some things on my source disk that I don't want to bring over, I just did a finder search for all my pics, docs and other file types and put them tn folders on the desktop. Got a big USB thumb drive from a discount house for 18 bucks and copied them there...then .copied them to the new MBA and reformatted the old MBA and sold it. Simple and forced me into a much needed housecleaning.

oldcelt said:

I have just heard that my new Air has shipped and while I wait impatiently, could some of you more experienced people help me get ready. I am 59 years old and self-taught regarding techie stuff, so be gentle with me!
My questions will show my ignorance.
At the moment have a 2007 Macbook Pro. I want to transfer my important stuff to the new Air, but not sure of the best way to do this. I am sure there are many unnecessary files on my computer, which I don't want.
I know there is migration assistant but don't want to move everything.
Also I want to delete some files but am not sure how vital they are.
I have a file called 'migrated pc files' which I assume are the remnants of my old Dell - can I just delete this??? Any things I should NOT touch???

Help please.

Click to expand...

I'm in your age group (I'm 64) and I went to the Apple store yesterday and bought the high end MBA (2ghz, 8gigs RAM, and 512gig SSD). I have a 2011 MBA that I wanted to transfer everything from.

I initially just waited until I was prompted on the new MBA to transfer from my other Mac and selected it. Since both MBA's were on the same wireless network, it started the transfer using WIRELESS. I waited about a half hour to check on the progress and it stated that it was going to take 25+ hours. Yikes. I needed to take one of these to the office in the morning so that clearly wasn't going to work.

Contrary to the advice on found on Apple's community forum, I interrupted the transfer and got out my Thunderbolt cable. ($ 49 from Apple). Fortunately, my 2011 MBA had a Thunderbolt connection.

I connected both MBA's via the Thunderbolt cable and then started the old Mac while at the same time press the "T" key to get into Target mode.

I then opened Migration Assistant on the new MBA and selected the option that said "Drive or other device". It wasn't the first one.

I was shocked and amazed that over 200gigs were transferred from my old MBA to the new on in less than 20 minutes. This included a VMware virtual machine that I run Windows 7 in that is about 80gigs.

I think the wireless option would have worked, but it just would have taken a lot longer. I've used FireWire 800 to accomplish the same thing and if there is a FireWire to Thunderbolt adapter, you could use that to transfer from your PRO to your MBA, but I didn't see one on the Apple store.

As of right now, I love Thunderbolt and will be looking for other peripherals that use this connection.

Looks like I'm wrong. There is an adapter for Firewire800 to Thunderbolt from Apple.

http://www.theverge.com/2012/6/11/3078439/apple-accessories-thunderbolt-firewire-800-gigabit-ethernet