Restoring my macbook from a time machine backup.

Hey everyone! I have a few questions about restoring files from a time machine backup that I'm hoping someone can help me with.

Unfortunately, my (2006) white macbook was stolen last weekend. I was able to buy a used (2007) macbook from a girl off craigslist last night for $300, and now I'm working on getting all my files from my external hard drive onto this new computer.

Luckily I had just completed a backup using time machine, and whoever broke in was too stupid to take my external hard drive, even though it looked brand new and expensive! haha

So I've found all my files within the "Backups.backupdb" folder on my external harddrive.

It has folders from 12 different backups I had done, all with different dates. I'm kind of confused because I don't know if each folder stores a complete backup on its own?? It doesn't seem to add up because if that were the case my external drive would be completely full. But from what I've seen so far it looks like the folder with the most recent date contains everything I need, unless I'm missing something.

I can't do a complete system restore because the new computer has Lion, and I was only running Snow Leopard. And I want the newer OS. Also, it has Aperture on it as well as newer Microsoft Office software than what I had on my computer. So anyway, I've slowly started moving things from the external drive to this computer, but I'm not sure what folders are important, and which aren't. I've already transferred over all my music, documents, most of my photos, and a few of the applications.

Here are the folders I see within the backup folder: Applications, Library, System, Developer, Users

Would there be any reason for me to save anything in the "System, Developer, or Library" folders?

Also, within my username folder in "Users", I see a bunch of folders like "Sites, Public, Library", that I'm not sure if I need??

I tried to drag & drop "Garageband" from the backup folder to my applications folder on this new mac, but then when I opened it it said "Path does not exist: /Library/Audio/Apple Loops Index", Then it tells me my "instrument library" is invalid.

So I'm afraid getting applications from my hard drive to this laptop is gonna be so confusing because I don't know if there are other folders the applications will need to access that might not exist?!

I still need to go through all the apps and see which ones I even still need.

I guess my questions are: what all do I need to transfer over? And can I delete the older backup folders, or are they all interconnected somehow?

What I'd suggest doing is doing a clean install of OSX on the new MacBook.

Once that's done run Migration Assistant using your Time Machine backup. It will put all your data and apps back exactly as they were on your original Mac.

If you don't want to erase and do a clean install you can just run Migration Assistant.

Thanks for the advice! I'll have to look into migration assistant.