I recently sold my iMac to buy a Macbook instead as I've been needing something more portable recently. I had Time Machine running on the iMac since day one, backing up to a WD Passport drive.
I had to sell and send off my iMac before I could get my Macbook, which meant I couldn't do a direct mac-to-mac transfer.
I've done plenty of computer migrations in the past, generally very time consuming and confusing. Sometimes I'd back up to discs, sometimes to an iPod or external hard drive. Doing it that way I would have to be very careful to think of what I'd need to copy over, and where it was located on the system; No use just copying over my Documents, music folders etc and forgetting that my Address Book contacts were stored in a folder buried somewhere in the user library folder. Then there would be the case of putting everything back in its place on the new machine. All of this wouldn't include things like application preferences etc, just documents and multimedia. Like I said... time consuming and confusing.
So I got my black Macbook (which by the way, I LOVE!) and upon first boot am greeted with the flashy intro video followed by the initial configuration wizard. After selecting which country I'm in, it asked me if I'd like to move my files from a previous mac. One of the options it gave me was to use a Time Machine backup. Plugged in my external hard drive with the Time Machine backup on, hit submit (or whatever the button said) and it threw up a progress bar and begun the transfer.
Left it doing its thing, came back, and oh... my... god. Was greeted with a perfect copy of the configuration on my previous iMac. Everything was the same as how I had it on my iMac. The icons in the dock, the desktop picture, the saved passwords in the keychain, the obscure programs I had running in the background/menu bar, my iTunes library, my internet and network settings, application preferences for both Apple and third-party software... wow! It was as if my iMac had been crammed inside this Macbook. Since then I've had no issues, no missing files, no problems whatsoever. Wow.
I know Windows has an "easy transfer" thing, but I find it very, very hard to believe a Windows migration between two PCs could be done this easily, smoothly and complete without losing any third-party settings or issues. Isn't this the kind of stuff which makes a Mac a Mac?
I had to sell and send off my iMac before I could get my Macbook, which meant I couldn't do a direct mac-to-mac transfer.
I've done plenty of computer migrations in the past, generally very time consuming and confusing. Sometimes I'd back up to discs, sometimes to an iPod or external hard drive. Doing it that way I would have to be very careful to think of what I'd need to copy over, and where it was located on the system; No use just copying over my Documents, music folders etc and forgetting that my Address Book contacts were stored in a folder buried somewhere in the user library folder. Then there would be the case of putting everything back in its place on the new machine. All of this wouldn't include things like application preferences etc, just documents and multimedia. Like I said... time consuming and confusing.
So I got my black Macbook (which by the way, I LOVE!) and upon first boot am greeted with the flashy intro video followed by the initial configuration wizard. After selecting which country I'm in, it asked me if I'd like to move my files from a previous mac. One of the options it gave me was to use a Time Machine backup. Plugged in my external hard drive with the Time Machine backup on, hit submit (or whatever the button said) and it threw up a progress bar and begun the transfer.
Left it doing its thing, came back, and oh... my... god. Was greeted with a perfect copy of the configuration on my previous iMac. Everything was the same as how I had it on my iMac. The icons in the dock, the desktop picture, the saved passwords in the keychain, the obscure programs I had running in the background/menu bar, my iTunes library, my internet and network settings, application preferences for both Apple and third-party software... wow! It was as if my iMac had been crammed inside this Macbook. Since then I've had no issues, no missing files, no problems whatsoever. Wow.
I know Windows has an "easy transfer" thing, but I find it very, very hard to believe a Windows migration between two PCs could be done this easily, smoothly and complete without losing any third-party settings or issues. Isn't this the kind of stuff which makes a Mac a Mac?