[P1] Moving the whole thing

[John Moore]

Brian, Are you saying that if I transfer my user folder and all my apps 
and docment files to the new computer, which is running osx2, that I 
would not need to transfer the system folder? Color me stuck in OS9, 
but I just assumed that my apps would also be putting items in my 
system folder, especially since one of them is ms office, which, in my 
experience, puts its, ahem, stuff all over the farm. Certainly dragging 
user, apps and document files would be a lot easier, but I feared i 
would be leaving something crucial behind. Thanks, jpm

On Tuesday, October 14, 2003, at 06:33 PM, Brian Pearce wrote:

> Initially, I was not a big fan of the enforced directory structure 
> (Applications Folders, Users Folders and what not) that was forced 
> upon me by OS X, but I've learned to live with it, and I can even 
> begin to see the advantages when it comes to transferring the contents 
> of a drive or backing up. (In this case, all the "data, preferences, 
> email, bookmarks, etc" should be in the Users' folder, which should be 
> easy enough to copy manually.)
>
> I set up a secondary user on my iMac devoted to backing up my iBook; 
> when I switch to that user, I have a virtual mirror of my iBook 
> (depending, of course, on when the files were last backed up).
>
> But with OS X, aren't we mostly past the point where we should even 
> *need* to write an exact duplicate of an older drive to transfer files 
> to a newer one? Is there any compelling reason to copy older System 
> files over to a new computer?