New MBP - transfer from time machine or the hard way?

[hooly]

I did a lot of searching and there seems to be two camps on this.

My new MBP will arrive in an hour or so. My old machine (about a year and a half old) seems slower than when I first got it, particularly slower to boot.

One camp (the majority) seems to say that if I take the short cut and just transfer all my files and apps across from a time machine back up, my new system performance would not be noticeably affected.

Another (smaller) camp claim that a fresh start on a clean OS adding only the needed files and programs gave good perfomance benefits.

So who is right, or does it 'depend'?

I have not installed excessive amounts of apps or unusual apps, just things like aperture, photoshop, adium, istumbler, quicksilver, office etc.

Very grateful for any last minute thoughts on whether to do it the easy way or the hard way

 

[MacDawg]

There is no right or wrong way
Mostly, it is your personal preference and convenience

Some are rabid about new installs
Personally, I just restored from TM with no issues

Woof, Woof - Dawg

 

[ifoner]

One camp (the majority) seems to say that if I take the short cut and just transfer all my files and apps across from a time machine back up, my new system performance would not be noticeably affected.

I just got my new MBP, and I chose to try Migration Assistant. (I know the Apple Store uses this as well) You just connect your old machine to the new one with a Firewire cable. Run the Migration Assistant, which will tell you to restart the old machine holding down the 'T' key to start it in target disk mode. After this, the hardrive on the old machine shows up on the new machine.

I can only tell you that for me this worked flawlessly. All apps are working, and I don't notice any bad side-effects. This may be faster than going through Time Machine as well.

Hope this helps.

 

[hooly]

Thanks for the reply!

From a techinical perspective there must be, in a given situation, either a potential for improved performance or not - that is not preference.

Although I can see that it is preference whether, say, a 3% improvement in performance is worth it, there must either be the potential for the improvement or not (although I guess it depends on specifically what is causing the perceived slow down). For a fact my MBP used to boot in under 30 seconds and now takes quite a bit longer...

 

[hooly]

Thanks ifoner - I have a firewire cable so if I take the easy route I will use migration assistant...

 

[DFTU101]

Use Migration Assistant

I'd use migration assistant. I just received my 13 inch MBP last week and restored from a backup of my old 13 inch MB. I had an issue with the audio driver for the built in speakers (I think the old MB uses a different one). Anyway, audio from the built in speakers would not work until I reformatted the new drive, loaded Mac OS X (from the new discs), and transferred using migration assistant (thus keeping all the new drivers-I think). Everything now works.

 

[hooly]

ok, so migration assistant rocks. all of my apps and personal tweaks and settings were seamlessly transferred

 

[zsnow]

if i restore from the time machine directly. I lost my speaker (no output device ). I　have to reinstall leopard and then use the migration assistant after everything fine.