Migrating/consolidating from PowerMac & PC to MBP

[MecaMac]

Hello!
Long-time Mac devotee/user seeks advice on best configuration and steps to migrate data from old system to new system to reduce pieces of hardware and improve performance/speed. (see end of post for specific questions). Thanks in advance!

Old system:
MAC - PowerMac 8500/120 (upgrade G3; 104 MB ram); OS 9.0.4 (also added usb port - untested to date)
PC - Dell; OS Windows XP home

Mac files are mostly graphic design (quark, illustrator, pagemaker) and PHOTOS; oc files are mostly word/excel with some photos (no design pages)

Old peripherals include:
Syquest drive (800MB of data)
Iomega Zip (10,000 MB of data)
Agfa Flatbed scanner
Epson (pos) printer
Lexmark Z65 printer

New System:
MBP penryn 4gb ram; 200 GB 7400 rpm HD

Questions on building new system:
1) Will any of the old peripherals work with Leopard OS10? If not, what should they be replaced with (if at all?)
2 Airport Extreme or Time Capsule?
3) Best external HD? ready-made or build to suit? (thinking of two 250 gb to have redundancy)
4) Best printer? (prefer multifunction, unless old agfa scanner will work with new system)

Questions on transferring files to MBP and/or external hard drive.
1) Fastest way?
2) How to get old email and bookmarks from Netscape to new system?
3) I understand I can't run classic applications on OS 10, but I do still want to be able to open old files (after installation of new software on OS10)

Doesn't this project sound like fun????

 

[velocityg4]

Old Peripherals
Syquest - depends on which drive and connectors used (ie 135 with scsi will not work)
ZIP - again depends on connector (USB ones should work)
AGFA - depends on connector used and model (check manufacturers support page for driver downloads for you model)
Epson - as above
Lexmark z65 - driver listed to 10.4 (so it may work in Leopard)

For the printers you can also try Gutenprint for opensource printer drivers.

Questions on building new system:
1. Will any of the old peripherals work with Leopard OS10? If not, what should they be replaced with (if at all?)
Look above: as for replacement
ZIP/Syquest: DVD Burner in Macbook
Printer/Scanner:
HP C6180: 5 ink cartridges, inkjet, wired & wireless networking
HP C7280: 5 ink cartridges, thermal inkjet, wired networking, duplexor
2. Airport Extreme or Time Capsule?
Airport extreme or other vendors Wireless N router I personally like DLink but Airport is probably easier. As for time capsule only if you network backup system and large NAS. Personally for a NAS I would build my own with RAID 5 for a faster storage device with some redundancy in case of hard drive failure.
3. Best external HD? ready-made or build to suit? (thinking of two 250 gb to have redundancy)
Build your own and go two 320gb instead it is about a $10 per drive difference on Newegg.com and are usually faster with a 16MB Cache, I prefer Hitachi and Seagate. This is the cheapest FW800 enclosure I know of (FW400 is much cheaper but modern drives can outperform FW400 and get bottlenecked speed wise) But why not build a NAS with RAID 5 and cover both Time Capsule and the external HD's?
4. Best printer? See above

Questions on transferring files to MBP and/or external hard drive.
1. Fastest way? Probably by ethernet
2. How to get old email and bookmarks from Netscape to new system? Unsure but Netscape probably has an export option; though you may need to choose a universal option like a tab deliniated text file.
3. I understand I can't run classic applications on OS 10, but I do still want to be able to open old files (after installation of new software on OS10)
Most of your old files should open fine still, except for the occasional file made for some long non-existant program (Like some old MSWorks files) but Quark, Illustrator, pagemaker, Photoshop and other major programs still produced today or somewhat recently should open fine.

 

[MecaMac]

Migrating/consolidating from PowerMac & PC to MBP

Cheers!
Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions.

I'm going with Airport Extreme...will let you know how well it gets along with my system.

Also, I like your recomendations for the HD setup....will look on the web for the pieces...but I'm still not confident about creating my own the first time (gulp).

Also like the printer rec - those models were on my shortlist....but it's good to know the Lexmark might work as a backup....

Anymore advice you (or anyone else) can add would be appreciated.
Thanks again.
M

 

[velocityg4]

The HD setup is just one more step than an external enclosure that already includes a Hard drive. The biggest thing to look out for is that the hard drive you buy has the same connector as the enclosures internal connector (ie ATA/IDE or SATA). Other than that you open the enclosure, connect the hard drive, format and use like any other external. This also gives you more control since you choose both the enclosure and hard drive.

If you have more than one computer or your computer and a networked media device such as an Apple TV I would seriously consider your own NAS, or low cost server (they cost about the same) to serve all of your files. Then you can have one central location with all of your files making it easier to access all of your data.