Hello,

I could almost finish my migration work. This was very hard, and I still don't feel very easy with the new environment, but in general, I like very much this new machine.

During the process of migration, I did some very basic and silly mistakes -- basic and silly, but still I find that often, it is very confusing and many people may do the same mistakes. So I will report them just for reference for some of you who would be interested in how one can be confused in this kind of situation.

The first silly thing that I did was the choice of HP Envy 100 as my new printer. I chose it because of its small size; I checked that it was compatible with OS X. But before deciding, I did not check which version of OS X it supported. After it has arrived, I tried to install its driver on my iBook (running OS 10.4.11), and found that it supports only 10.5 and higher. -- Now that I could install it on my iMac, I understand that its installation "wizard" is a very sophisticated program, and it certainly requires a sophisticated OS. And I am rather satisfied with this new printer (although I am disappointed that its paper tray is very small, and can contain only a small amount of sheets...). Still, I now understand that it is important to verify the compatible versions of OS, before deciding to buy a new hardware...

The second (and perhaps the most important) silly mistake: I found that it was possible to use a Time Machine backup as the source of migration using Migration Assistant.app. But when I first started the new machine, I thought it was important to make an user account which is the same as my old user account (both on my iBook, and my office machine, a PM G5, which have "ni" as the first user). Although Migration Assistant.app offered me the opportunity of using it at that moment to use my Time Machine backup of PM G5, I created my account "ni" on my new machine (Migration Assistant.app said at that moment that I would be able to use it later to run it for the migration...). Then, afterwards, I tried to use Migration Assistant.app to import my working environment of PM G5 to my new iMac, but it said that it could import only my "Applications" folder's contents, and not my user account contents -- because I already had the account named "ni" on my new machine (or I was offered to rename my basic account, which I did not want at all...!). This is very silly (and now, I remember that I did the same mistake before...!); and I had to make a new, normal backup of my account on my PM G5 machine, and do a manual copy of needed data, applications, Library items, etc. to my new iMac. Still, I find that this is very misleading. If you want to use Migration Assistant.app to import all your account on your older machine, it is necessary to do it at the very first moment, before creating your account on your new machine.

The third mistake (which is certainly a consequence of this second mistake) was about the migration of mail environment. I thought it would be possible to use Mail.app's "File > Import Mail Boxes" menu-item, and choose in my backup disk "~/Library/Mail" folder. It imported the mail boxes, but in a mail box named "Import". This was not at all what I wanted. What I wanted was to import all my mail boxes, and mail settings, etc. I deleted all this "import" mail box, and copied all the contents of my old ~/Library/Mail folder into the new ~/Library/Mail folder. But this was not enough: I had to set manually all my mail accounts information in Mail.app on my new machine, in order to make my mails in Inbox and Sent box, etc., appear in these boxes. Perhaps I should have copied also my old ~/Library/com.apple.mail.plist (or some other file?) in the corresponding location in my new machine...? -- Anyway, I have lost my "Previous Recipients" list, and I will still have to set my "Rules" in Mail Preferences.... I find this very confusing too.

I hope these stories might be interesting to some of you.

Best regard,

Nobumi Iyanaga
Tokyo,
Japan