Use Time Machine to move your data from one computer to another. You'll be happy you did.

Yesterday I had to move all my information from one machine to another to send the old one in for repair (you know, the classic G5 whining noise thing). In the past this has been a nightmare, in the last few years Apple at least provided a Migration Assistant Application, but it didn't do a complete job. I wanted to change computers entirely and have it be transparent.

I've been using an external firewire drive as a Time Machine backup, and was introduced to the "Restore From Time Machine Backup" option in the OS X install disc.

I simply backed up one last time to Time Machine, unplugged the old computer, plugged in the new one, loaded the OS X 10.5 disc onto the new one by holding C while powering up, went to the utilities menu, chose "Restore From Time Machine Backup", plugged in the external drive, and hit the go button.

In about 5 hours I had my new system up and running exactly as my old one had been before it on different hardware. Icons were in the same spot, my keyboard/mouse preferences were retained, I had no permissions issues. So far as I could tell, the only thing it didn't remember were my desktop backgrounds (I got one from last week and the default space one on the other screen), and my screen saver preferences.

Tip: before leaving the old computer, I deauthorized that machine from my iTunes account, and all my Adobe software.

And for anyone curious, I was going from a Dual 2.7Ghz G5, to a Quad 2.5 Ghz G5. I would guess going from PPC to PPC works well, and Intel to Intel, but I would guess you couldn't go from PPC to Intel, however I could be wrong.