New iMac and want to clone

I just ordered a new iMac for my wife and I would like to clone mine. Is there and easy way to have her iMac totally cloned to mine...apps included?

Thanks

Larry Potter said:

I just ordered a new iMac for my wife and I would like to clone mine. Is there and easy way to have her iMac totally cloned to mine...apps included?

Thanks

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When you set up the new machine, you'll have the option to run the Migration Assistant. That will help you transfer settings/documents and applications from another Mac. Just keep in mind that in many cases, commercial software is licensed only to run on one machine in your household at a time.

as cwa107 says Migration assistant is the way to go

you will need a firewire cable to use this

Your wife's machine will have your username and password, to change this to her name, use the accounts preferences. Do NOT rename her home folder in the finder

If you have an external hard drive, you should be able to use one of CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper to make a perfect bootable clone of your hard disk. Assuming the machines are of the same model, you should then be able to boot your wife's new machine off the external hard drive and then reverse the process - use the same program to clone the external hard drive onto the internal drive that came with the machine. Straight and simple.

One consideration though. Do you have any licensed software on your machine? If so, you are now running two copies of it, although you only have one license. You could be violating the license terms for the software in question. For example, if you have Photoshop on your machine and use the above to clone it onto her machine, you will most definitely be in violation of the Photoshop license.