“I got my first Mac, an iBook, in 2002. It ran Mac OS 10.2 Jaguar. Since then, I’ve migrated my electronic life to new hardware three times and to a new OS version four times,” Iljitsch van Beijnum reports for Ars Technica. “I’m sure the Migration Assistant can assist me in moving from my MacBook running 10.6 to a new MacBook Air running 10.7 without trouble. But after almost a decade, I’m ready to make a clean break and start from scratch, only migrating my data—no applications, libraries, or the cruft that has built up in nooks and crannies of the system.”
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van Beijnum reports, “Why attempt a manual migration at this point? Four reasons: applications, settings, bloated iLife libraries, and cruft left behind in the Library folder.”
Tons more in the full article here.http://arstechnica.com/apple/guides/2011/07/making-a-clean-start-with-lion-migrating-without-assistance.ars