Going from a G4 12" powerbook to a new iMac

Question

hi there,
we bought a new iMac for family use a few months ago. we did not have a firewire cable when we first started it so i was not able to migrate all of the stuff on my 12" G4 powerbook to the new computer. for a while i thought i just wanted to migrate just movies, pics, and my iTunes library (all of which suck up about 50GB of space on my 60GB powerbook). but over time, i have decided that it is time to move everything from the powerbook and put it on the iMac.
i am wondering if i can just re-install leopard (which came with the iMac) and make the iMac act as if it is brand new and starting for the first time and use the firewire cable to migrate everything. there is nothing really saved on it that i can't save to a CD-ROM. i installed a few applications on there (MS office suite, appleworks, etc.) but i can re-load that stuff.
if i don't do that, i could use migration assistant but that seems tedious and in reality, with my powerbook screen dimming and losing life over time, it seems to make sense to move everything from the laptop to the iMac and just use the laptop for internet access when traveling.
thoughts? help?
teresa

Answer 1

There's really no need to migrate everything. In fact it's a bad idea because the PB is not an Intel Mac and you might migrate things that will make your iMac stop working. I suggest you just use Target Disk Mode to copy over only the files you need. See the following:
Folders You Can Move to Your new Mac
From the Home folder copy the contents of Documents, Movies, Music, Pictures, and Sites.
In your /Home/Library/ folder:
/Home/Library/Application Support/AddressBook (copy the whole folder)
/Home/Library/Application Support/iCal (copy the whole folder)
Also in /Home/Library/Application Support (copy whatever else you need including folders for any third-party applications)
/Home/Library/Keychains (copy the whole folder)
/Home/Library/Mail (copy the whole folder)
/Home/Library/Preferences/ (copy the whole folder)
/Home /Library/iTunes (copy the whole folder)
/Home /Library/Safari (copy the whole folder)
/Home /Library/Calendars (copy the whole folder)
If you want cookies:
/Home/Library/Cookies/Cookies.plist
/Home/Library/Application Support/WebFoundation/HTTPCookies.plist
For Entourage users:
Entourage is in /Home/Documents/Microsoft User Data
Also in /Home/Library/Preferences/Microsoft
For FireFox:
/Home/Library/Applications Support/FireFox
/Home/Library/Preferences/org.mozilla.firefox.plist
Credit goes Macjack for this information.