Painless Transition

The title of this blog entry is not about the transition from Eliot Spitzer to David Paterson. I am sure the World has heard enough about political sex scandals. Instead, the transition I have in mind is that from a G4 Mac PowerBook to an Intel MacBook, Black, no less!

As my Wife tries to put more efforts into her side business, the details of which shall remain unmentioned, she wants to have her own laptop (LT) computer to conduct business, perhaps at meetings and so forth. Luckily, she agreed to get a Mac so a few weeks later she has her Mac laptop. Maybe just to be easily distinguished from my silver color LT, she wants the Black MacBook.

I was unpleasantly surprised that the LT came with Tiger (Mac OS X 10.4). Hello? It's been a year since Leopard was released, why isn't it pre-installed? Luckily, a Leopard DVD was included in the package and installation went without a hitch.

The exact painless transition I have in mind is the migration of accounts, data, and apps from the old LT to the new one. What a beautiful process! One unique thing with Mac computers is that they can be easily turned into a hard drive, external to another Mac. While booting up, just hold down the letter T, short for target, and the Mac will become, in this day and age, just another FireWire device. Hook up a FireWire cable from the target Mac to another, and you can transfer stuff over to the other Mac. I know in the old SCSI days, the same thing can be done, whether it was another letter on the keyboard I am not sure.

Apple's Migration Assistant worked well for me. On the new LT, I just had to delete the new account I created for my Wife then the Assistant imported her old account and its data. I also brought over everything in the Applications folder. I should do the same for my account. Even though I won't be using her LT regularly, I can think of the new toy, uh, work device, as an extra backup.