New Mac Computer

Well, the new Mac Mini arrived Wensday, but I was tired.  I had to do errands most on yesterday, but got at it in the late afternoon.  Macs have something called Migration assistant that helps you transfer important files from a Mac to a PC, a PC to a Mac, or a Mac to Mac (from new to old or old to new).

That sounds really great, but unless you have about every cable and/or adaptor in existence, it can be an adventure.  I don't, and it was!

The most direct way of migrating from one Mac to another is too simply have them both up and running with an HDMI cable between them.  Which requires 2 sets of monitors/keyboards/mouses, all of which I actually have!

But Mac Minis have only one HDMI port.  My monitors plug into HDMI ports.  But so does the recommended Mac to Mac. No amount of searching through my box of odd cables and adaptors would make that work. 

I could have gone to a local store and bought the one adaptor I needed, but NOOOOOO, I had to make it work with what I had.  Well, sometimes half the fun in life is the challenge...

And one thing I had was a brand new Western Digital (WD) 4Tb backup drive (my old Seagate 500Gb drive just wasn't able to backup all my files anymore) that I ordered at the same time as the new Mac.

So, I didn't have the right cables to go direct Mac to Mac.  But the Mac Migration Assistant said it was perfectly happy using a Time Machine backup.  So I set up the old Mac to the new WD backup disk and set it to backup the old Mac.  Took 3 hours!  It was an initial backup (copying everything).

I was just finishing a late dinner when the backup completed.  I moved the WD backup and all the other cables to the new Mac and opened Migration Assistant there.  I had to register the new Mac slightly (language, location, User ID, Password, etc.  The user name and password set me back for a while.  In spite of it being a new computer, somewhere, the Mac Universe knows who I am and disagreed with my name.  I finally discovered that my old password on Capital letters and some numbers NOW required a lower case letter also.  Got THAT straightened out, and went through a bunch of stuff about using the Cloud.  Sorry, not yet for that for me. 

They were insistent, so I had to go through a bunch of "Are you SURE?" questions.  But I finally got to the NEW Mac Migration Assistant, and it searched for an external drive.  Found it and started downloading files. 

I was really worried at first.  The progress bar stayed at 1% for 30 minutes.  But then it suddenly progressed faster and only took another hour. 

I amused myself during the wait by changing the water for my 2 Siamese Fighting fish (separate containers of course),  doing a load of laundry, tossing toys to the Mews, and listening to MSNBC commentary in the background.

But even massive file transfers through slow cables do come to an end and the new Mac reported it had completed the file download.  A quick check suggests that all my files are saved, are saved in familiar folders, and my Firefox and Safari browsers have my bookmarks.  I checked iPhoto next for all my photos.

Its not the same.  Nothing I couldn't figure out, but more on THAT soon as there are changes I don't like and may ask questions about to fellow Mac users.

Everything ELSE seems to work pretty much the same, but I checked iPhotos first as it matters more to my blogs than word or spreadsheet programs do.

The important thing is that I am up and running on a Mac with more memory, processing speed and backup.  I understand the programs (generally, given some changes)

It doesn't solve my unhappiness with the transfer of my Verizon email (which I was utterly happy with) to AOL (which seems restrictive, user-unfriendly, and overflowing with ads).  THAT is a problem to solve in a few days.  I can LIVE with AOL for right now, just won't STAY with them for long.  They want to "nickle and dime" me to death for every service to avoid what I don't want them to provide in the first place.  And I have 3 email addresses (for which they charge a monthly fee each).  And I can't simply switch from one to another as I could on Verizon, I have to log out and then back in each time. 

But the migration is complete, my new computer runs faster, and I'm back on line.  For today, that's is enough.