How do I transfer files from mac with snow leopard to a new retina display mac

Question

What is the easiest way to transfer files from my old mac(2008) snow leopard to my new retina display mac book pro?

Answer 1

Easiest? Well there is some sort of wireless transfer thing, but I hear it takes FOREVER like several days and it's glitchy.
The Retina doesn't have a Firewire port I believe, so Target Disk Mode is out, unless you have a adapter and I don't know how well that will work out. Cost another $30 for the adpatper I bet.
The likely most easiest?
Run down to any computer or office store and pickup a powered external USB hard drive that's the same size or larger then the old Mac's boot drive.
Boot the old Mac and download Carbon Copy Cloner.
(or use the TimeMachine if it asks, but it takes a reallly long time and if there are problems, then it's harder to recover files from)
Format the external drive in Disk Utility with Partition: option GUID and OS X Extended Journaled (default setting)
Use CCC to clone OLD A boot drive to External Drive B, takes about a few hours depending how much stuff you have.
Hook up drive to new Mac, (either clone or TimeMachine drive)
Use the free Migration Assistant in your Application Utility folder to transfer over, but creates a new user account (you can later delete one)
Or if you haven't set up the new Mac yet, when you do set it up during that process, you can transfer from the External Drive B and it won't have the account you set the machine up with naturally just uses the ones from the clone or TimeMachine drive.
Once your fine and dandy on the new machine, then Disk Utility erase and use the external USB to create either a bootable clone with CCC or a TimeMachine drive for backup.
Since you need a backup drive anyway, this method is better and happens to be reliable and easy.
Most commonly used backup methods