Transferring "stuff" from old powerbook to new MBP

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Your Mac's Specs
2006 Macbook Pro 15.4" glossy screen, 2.16 ghz, 640 gb, 2 gb ram
My family (parents and siblings) are coming to my house tomorow for our Christmas get-together. My sister got from her husband a new MBP because her old Powerbook was on its last leg. I just got this email from her and figured I could get some help from y'all:

"hey. i got a new macbook pro for xmas. i can't figure out the best way to get my "stuff" from my Powerbook to my macbook and to get my iphone data onto my new macbook from the powerbook or the phone itself. suggestions? my powerbook is too old to do the migration thingy. I do have an external hard drive with most of my data stored there...

I think i'm going to bring it all with me tomorrow and see if you can help me. is that OK?"


My first thought is to try the good old copy & paste method, but I'm sure she would have already thought of that. Can y'all give me several other suggestions so I'll have a little arsenal of approaches? I realize this is kinda vague...but I've shared with you all I know!

If this needs to be in another forum please move it. I couldn't decide where to post this.

TIA!!
 
Joined
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Your Mac's Specs
2.8 GHz 15" MacBook Pro OS X 10.7.x & some old Macs
Since you can't use Migration Assistant, the next choice I would use is Target Disk Mode. You do need to borrow or buy a Firewire cable that goes from Firewire 400 to Firewire 800. When you have it setup then just copy all the files over to the new computer. You will have to re-install all the applications though because you might get errors if you simply copy them over especially if the PowerBook has an older version of Mac OS. If that is the case then you will most likely need the updated software version that works on Snow Leopard.

The longer way is to use the external hard drive and transfer the files there first and then over to the new computer. Target Disk Mode eliminates the "middle man". Also if your sister wants the data already on the external also on her new computer then all she has to do is transfer it over once it's connected.

Someone else is going to have to help you with the iPhone because I don't have any experience transferring it to a new computer.
 

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