Time Machine Backup

Yes... it will bring back everything. Make sure you run Migration Assistant on the new machine when it pops up during the setup process. That will bring in your old account and everything else along with it.

 

I am getting ready to do this from a mac pro to a mac air. I have never ran time machine but will be doing so soon. I am guessing I will run it to an external harddrive and then connect the external to the air on bootup and then it will give me the option of restoring from this time machine backup?

also if the air comes with mountain lion and my pro is on lion will that be a problem?

 

Yes it will just like a iPhone backup will restore it back to the original state

 

That won't be a problem, but you don't want to "restore"... what you should do is after the new Air starts for the first time and you select language and time zone, the Migration Assistant will start. Just tell the Migration Assistant you want to import data from your old machine and point it to the Time Machine backup from the Pro. This will import your account along with all apps and settings.

 

Make sure that if you are running ML on the older one, you upgrade to ML on the new one before you migrate your data, otherwise you will have a bit of a mess to deal with. Easy fix but easier to make sure both are ML first.

 

As others have hinted at, you want your data on the new machine, but all of the preference files and the like only have the potential to cause problems with the newer hardware. Might be fine though.

I'd just import your music, photos, movies, documents etc using the migration assistant. Spending a bit of time to re-set everything is much better than having to do it all again.

David