Should I do anything to prepare for a new macbook?

[sam10685]

I'm thinkin I'm goin to get a new macbook very soon. I wanted to wait and see what Leopard was bringing to the table but it doesn't intrigue me as much as Tiger did when I had Panther. Is there anything I should do? How would I transfer some of the data from my Powerbook G4? Firewire cable? Would that transfer everything? I don't want everything. Just some songs and pics. Any other extra's that I should get? Thank you.

 

[mad jew]

Yep. A firewire cable plus Target Disk Mode is a pretty good bet. If I were you, I'd transfer data manually rather than use Migration Assistant, especially as you're going from a PPC machine to an Intel one. For iTunes and iPhoto, copy the contents of your Music and Pictures folder from one machine to the other while their respective apps are closed and that should retain your playlists, albums and other data.

 

[operator]

You could also pick up an external hd for transferring your files. Then you also have a backup solution.

Other things to do:
- get a sleeve or case;
- get a mini-dvi to dvi adapter;
- buy more ram to upgrade yourself - it's easy to do.

 

[sam10685]

Yep. A firewire cable plus Target Disk Mode is a pretty good bet. If I were you, I'd transfer data manually rather than use Migration Assistant, especially as you're going from a PPC machine to an Intel one. For iTunes and iPhoto, copy the contents of your Music and Pictures folder from one machine to the other while their respective apps are closed and that should retain your playlists, albums and other data.

Does Target Disk Mode make it easy to transfer manually? (I've never done this... want to know all there is...) There's thousand's of songs and pictures on my powerbook but I only want less than half of them.

 

[LightMast]

You could also pick up an external hd for transferring your files. Then you also have a backup solution.

Other things to do:
- get a sleeve or case;
- get a mini-dvi to dvi adapter;
- buy more ram to upgrade yourself - it's easy to do.

So the DVI port on the macbook pro is not standard size? My dell 2405 wont just plug in there?

 

[polevault139]

No the connector on the MB is a mini-DVI but the adapter will work fine for hooking it up to your display.

 

[LightMast]

Looks like macbook pro takes standard DVI

 

[Wolfpup]

Another option for transfering stuff is just doing it over a network. Since you have Airport on both of these, you can just use that. Or hook up a regular Ethernet cable between them (assuming you don't have a full wired network).

Setting up file sharing on a Mac is ludicrously easy. It pretty much involves clicking "Turn on file sharing" or whatever in the sharing control panel.

When I transfer an iTunes library to a different computer, what I'll do is just network them (or the Firewire cable would work fine too), navigate to the actual files location on the original computer, and then just drag and drop the whole thing onto iTunes in the new computer. It'll take a while, but move everything over and file everything back up. Of course I guess that wouldn't retain playlists you've defined, which could be annoying if you have tons of those.

I've never used iPhoto, so don't know if you can do the same thing. (iPhoto kind of scares me, in that I want to make sure *I* understand where these photos are and what they're called and how they're filed in case I use something else down the road).

So the DVI port on the macbook pro is not standard size? My dell 2405 wont just plug in there?

The Macbook Pro has a normal DVI port. They were referring to the Macbook, which has a tiny port that uses a $20 adapter to hook it to DVI or VGA screens.

 

[iMacBook]

prepare yourself for some MASSIVE SPEEDS!!!! hah you wont be able to keep up with it, no more waiting for anything gotta love macs

That's another reason why I'm buying a MacBook. No more waiting. On my computer, it takes like, 2 minutes to start Firefox. :|

 

[mad jew]

Does Target Disk Mode make it easy to transfer manually? (I've never done this... want to know all there is...) There's thousand's of songs and pictures on my powerbook but I only want less than half of them.

It simply mounts one machine's hard drive as an external drive on the other machine, making it ridiculously easy to manually transfer files.

 

[Wolfpup]

That's another reason why I'm buying a MacBook. No more waiting. On my computer, it takes like, 2 minutes to start Firefox. :|

Whozers. What kind of hardware is this? I can't imagine what kind of CPU would load it that slowly. I mean a 500MHz CPU should be way faster than that. Heck, a 200MHz Pentium 1 would probably do faster. (Although I think it's beneath the official system requirements.)

 

[sam10685]

It simply mounts one machine's hard drive as an external drive on the other machine, making it ridiculously easy to manually transfer files.

Nice... Thank you... didn't know that!

 

[mad jew]

No worries mate.