Reselling a Mac - complicated situation...

[superspiffy]

I'm sure some of you who has ever resold your old Mac to buy the latest one have found yourself in a situation similar as to mines:

I need enough money to buy the new MBP, but I can only have enough after I've sold my old MBP. The problem is that I need to migrate the entire OSX partition from the old one to the new one. I can't be bothered by installing programs again because I've got a lot of uncompleted FCP projects in the old MBP. Obviously, I can't have two MBPs at the same time because I need to sell the old one to get the new one. I've asked Apple Stores if they can perform the file migration prior to the purchase of a Mac, but they said I have to purchase a Mac first before they're able to do it. Does anybody have a solution?

 

[jsw]

A cheap external drive - which is always a good thing to have and well worth the investment. Pretty much anyone you buy (of any physical size) will be enough, and you can clone your drive to it, then clone it to the new MBP (or just copy over apps).

 

[uicandrew]

1. start burning to dvds
2. buy an external drive and use SuperDuper (excellent program
3. find a friend with extra hard drive space or an empty partition.
4. or pay for the new mbp with credit card and then you have a month to sell your old one before having to pay off the new one.

did you expect the apple store to let you "borrow" a $2000+ machine that you could easily back out of, and then they are left with an open box item?

 

[jeremy.king]

You should really invest in a backup solution.

My vote is for uicandrew #4, use a credit card. If you don't have one, or can't get one - Use a family member or trusting friend.

 

[PDE]

As others have said: you NEED a backup solution. My recommendation is to get an external hard drive and then use Superduper which really is super! That way you can just clone your entire drive and when you get the new one, just click one button and clone it to the new one, restart and you're up and running again.

Seriously, super duper is really great.

Or, as others suggestd, get the new one on a credit card and just sell your old one before you have to pay the card. There's a huge market for used MBPs it seems so it shouldn't be a problem.

 

[Spanky Deluxe]

Get an external hard drive, use the install disks to install OS X on it. Run software update to get it to the newest version of OS X (so that your new MBP can boot of it), then copy everything over manually. Either this or clone your MBP's drive onto an external drive. If you do it right, you can make sure that you have a bootable volume exactly as you need it. If you just copy random stuff over to an external hard drive there's a chance you might miss something important for an application. If you do it this way then you can check it first rather than end up with only your new MBP and nothing to get the lost data off.

 

[eb3604]

you haven't seen that sex and the city episode where the sad mac appears? Buy an external HD. You can get an 160gb for under 100. You can also sign up for a new credit card (yes it will lower your credit score by like 4-10 points) with a 0 APR for 12 months. BofA, Chase, Amex, etc all have 0% promotional rates for some of their cards. That way you get 12 months to pay it off! And Doesn't Apple have a buying program?

 

[uicandrew]

you haven't seen that sex and the city episode where the sad mac appears? Buy an external HD. You can get an 160gb for under 100. You can also sign up for a new credit card (yes it will lower your credit score by like 4-10 points) with a 0 APR for 12 months. BofA, Chase, Amex, etc all have 0% promotional rates for some of their cards. That way you get 12 months to pay it off! And Doesn't Apple have a buying program?

that is a great sex and the city episode, where aiden gets Carrie a clamshell, but she still sticks with her pismo.

the pismo is still an amazing machine. the contours are just sexy.