Migration assistant tips please.

Hi, will be setting up a new 24" soon and need some advice. Of course, I'll want to transfer data from my old machine, G3 600. Waht is the best way to go about this?
1. Is there some prep work I should do on my old mac first?
2. I've heard that is was not a good idea to copy apps(maybe other components, too) from the old machine to make sure the machine stays as clean as possible. Is this true?
3. If true, then I of course still want to transfer all my files, music, photos, etc. Does this mean I just choose to transfer my user file? What are the advantages of this?
4. What about internet, mail accounts and configurations. Are these transferred from the user account, or, where are these?
5. If I don't transfer apps, I'm assuming I then have to go back and make sure all the apps I want are there, and update all of them as well. In this case, do i drag and drop them?
Would appreciate any thoughts on the subject. Perhaps I should just transfer everything, although people have told me it's not the best method to keep our new machine as clean as possible. Hope this makes sense. Many thanks for your assistance and expertise in this area. Bit of a double post, sorry. Was not sure where it belongs.

Hi Mathew,
There are numerous opinions on this subject. I can only tell you what my experience has been this week when I got my 24" iMac. I used MA to transfer everything (including Virtual PC) from my G5 iMac. It took just over an hour to transfer about 75GB. Obviously, there were several applications that would not run, including VPC and a number of System 9 apps. I deleted the ones that would not run on the Intel, and had to reinstall a few that needed me to reenter their license code. I found there were a few others that have been upgraded to Universal Binary and downloaded them as well. Altogether, not too difficult a process, but it would depend on how many "old" apps you have.
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