Help! Can't Migrate Contacts (w/notes) & Calendar from OS10.4.11

Question

I'm at my wits end.
I spoke with Applecare support and the Genius Bar but no one is able to help with a solution.
I've owned Macs for 20 years but I have an old Desktop G5 (PPC) running OS 10.4.11 purchased immediately before the Intel transition ...that machine had a death sentence from the moment I purchased it.
I recently purchased a Macbook Pro Retina 13" (late 2013) and I need to move my data from the G5 to the new Macbook.
On my G5:
-I have all my addresses and contact info in Apples 'Address Book' application version 4.0.6
-I have all my appointments and records of appointments on Apple's iCal application version 2.0.5.
As there is no migration support in Mavericks to use with my G5 I've tried exporting vfiles from the Address book an importing the vfile into Contacts. It does import, but unfortunately it strips out ALL of the data in the 'notes' section of each contact entry. I have hundreds of contacts with lots of data in the note field which has now vanished.  If I have to go manually, entry by entry, and copy this data over to the Macbook it would take forever and would be easier to forgo the  computer but instead use a card catalogue filing system like was used in the 1960s. Applecare says they do not know how to do this import operation. Gahhh!
I have the same issue with iCal. I have well over a decade's worth of events and notes recorded therein. I was told by Applecare that Mavericks will import the calendars, but only in one mass lump ... that is to say my distinct and individual calendars for business, medical, legal, etc. etc. will not be retained. Gahhh!
This is becoming a huge problem and instead of making my life easier it feels like using Macintosh is complicating things. My life is now in limbo fractured between two computers with different OS. My Macbook is useless to me as I cannot access the data I need to access with it. So now, I have two computers and my life is getting schizophrenic with a divide created. As the days and weeks and months progress it's going to become harder to bridge this and synchronize things ... I'll have two separate computing systems, used for different tasks.
I've been struggling with this for a few weeks with my new Macbook purchase. To make matters worse, I leave for Nepal in two days, for 4 months. I bought the Macbook for this trip but I cannot import my data into it. I'm at my wits end and deeply disappointed with Apple's lack of support.
If there an easy and reasonable way to do what I want to do?
Thanks a bunch for any assistance.
-Lovegasoline

Answer 1

By any chance are you running any Eset security software products (like Nod32) on that PC?
If so, there's a couple of alternatives.
Either try the procedure in Samoreen's post:
Re: iTunes 11.1.4.62 freezes while syncing with Outlook
Or, see if you can get hold of the Eset beta addressing the problem. As Samoreen notes in another post:
ESET have a workaround for this issue. They gave me access to a test version of the HIPS module and this fixed the problem. So I could re-enable the ESET_OPTIONS environment variable (although I still consider that it's a questionable idea). I upgraded to iTunes 11.1.5.5 and there was no problem.
So maybe you should get in touch with ESET support and request the new module ? Just send a message to Marcos in the ESET forum.
Re: Outlook 2013 Calendar Sync fails with new iTunes 11.1.5.5