Need help with iphone/Macbook pro = Noob

Firstly id like to say hi all, Iv just brought a macbook pro and come from nearly the first OSX to 10.6.4 so its all really new to me, i had a second gen imac that was maxed out with the first ever OSX, so i have been out of touch for a very long time nearly 5 years or so.

Ok now my problem and sorry if somebody has asked already I just want an answer after hours of searching with no joy. I have hundreds of pics on my iphone 3gs and want to import to macbook, using iphoto and image capture will only copy the pics i have taken from my iphone and thats it, but i want every single pic and this is driving me crazy. I really do need help as i admit defeat now.........

Also my old imac i want to backup..... it has a fully HD of 40Gig lol, i know its tiny but its old and dont want to bin it before getting info e.g years of pics and music. Whats the best way round this?? Gonna guess buy an external but will it work going from 10.1 to 10.6.4?? time machine is also new to me and i dont really understand it yet.

This is my first post so break me in gently lol
Thanks in advance

Welcome to the board. There are lots of helpful folks around so I'm sure you will have answers in no time. Being new to the iPhone I and moving files onto/off of it I shall leave that to someone else.

The best bet for moving the files would be an external hard drive as you suggested. If you need to make a "bootable" copy of the drive then your best bet is an older version of Carbon Copy Cloner. Otherwise I think drag and drop will work to move the data files.

As far as Time Machine goes it does quite a lot but has its limitations. Here's an overview I wrote a while back ATPM 15.03 - How To: Time Travel: Introduction to Time Machine