Migration Assistant

[AB]

New MacBook Air has arrived so I'm tidying up my old MacBook Pro before giving it to the OH.

It's a late 2009 model and starting to show its age in terms of speed etc so I was thinking of just dragging the apps I use, MS Office amongst them, onto my external hard drive. All documents are taken care of using Dropbox so no worries there and my Music and Pictures are all backed up.

So I assume there's little point in using Migration Assistant as it'll bring over all the stuff I don't really want or need also?

Really I want a fresh start free from the crap I have accumulated over the years.

I guess I've answered my own question...

My Macbook also backs itself up to my external hard drive regularly but it's just a time machine disk image so I can't go in and grab individual things which is a bit of a pain.

Any advice gratefully accepted as to the best way to do this.

[AB]

http://lifehacker.com/5652685/how-can-i-move-singl...

Some research has thrown this up.

Seems a good way of moving the programs, such as Office.

I'm hoping I can just drag iPhoto and iTunes across and it'll sort everything out for me, not the end of the world if it doesn't so long as I have the actual photos somewhere to import them back on to the new machine.

Most of the other apps I use have come from the App Store so I can just login on the new machine and download them again.

Again, thinking out loud mostly but can anyone see any flaws in my master plan?

[Bikerjon]

AB said:

Really I want a fresh start free from the crap I have accumulated over the years.

I guess I've answered my own question...

You have! Otherwise use migration assistant and bring the whole lot over - note that Office 2011 will most likely need re-activating if that's the version you use. Alternatively just migrate the user account data but no apps.