Yesterday my dad received a late Christmas present from my mom in the form of a new 15″ Macbook Pro to replace his aging 12″ PowerPC-based Macbook, and I helped him use Apple’s Migration Assistant software (free) to transfer all his files and settings from the old computer to the new one. This was the first time I’ve personally used the Migration Assistant, which is free software Apple provides to transfer files via firewire, ethernet, or wifi. I was VERY impressed with how easy the process was. Sometimes it is an advantage to do some “house cleaning” and organizing of files (as well as some deleting) when you move from one computer to another. Since my dad moved to a much larger hard drive, however, there wasn’t a storage space limitation which forced him to delete some files. The Migration Assistant not only moved all his login settings / control panel settings, but also his iCal calendars, bookmarks in Safari, iTunes library, iPhoto pictures, etc. His iPhone synced up right away after the transfer, and it appears all files were copied over, even retaining their same locations on his desktop!
The only additional installs he needed were FireFox, DiskInventoryX, Skype, NetNewsWire, Perian, and MS Office. I also installed Chrome for him to try.
If you’ve ever helped someone move all their computer files AND settings over to a new machine, you can probably appreciate how wonderful it is to simply connect an ethernet cable, click a few buttons, and then wait about an hour for 1.5 gigabytes of information to transfer over to a new computer in exactly the right places. Way to go Apple, the Migration Assistant rocks!
Apple’s “Migrate Your Files” page on Switch101 also recommends the $40 “Move2Mac” program as another migration option. We would have used a Firewire400 to move files between laptops more quickly, but the new MacBookPro has the faster Firewire800 port and I don’t have a Firewire800 to 400 adapter. Wired ethernet was slower but worked fine.
After transferring files and completing these installations, we still had to perform updates for MS Office and for the Apple operating system and built-in applications. That process took about thirty minutes.
I have a complete list of Apple/Macintosh applications I use on my own computer, available on my personal wiki / Google site.
Technorati Tags:
apple, macintosh, migration, assistant
On this day..
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- Stream Hulu+ to a HDMI Television with Airplay Mirroring, an iPad2 and Apple TV - 2011
- Virtuoso iPad Teacher - 2010
- iPad Document Camera and Ustream Setup - 2010
- A custom photo book for Nana - 2009
- Scanning with Apple's Preview Application - 2009
- Congrats to the 2008 EduBlog winners! - 2008
- Nominate for the Twitter Shorty Awards - 2008
- Historical and Current Abolitionists: Fighting to end slavery - 2007
- Online conference learning and open content - 2006
