Quick Mac question for ya...

[Berger_4_]

Hey guys, just got myself a Macbook Pro, and let me tell you what...it's pretty damn snazzy! But I've got a question about it...what is the easiest way for me to get my music from an XP machine that ran iTunes onto my new Mac with all the naming of songs and stuff. I've got 5200 songs plus movies so if there's some way other than using a crappy flash drive, that'd be great! Oh and I tried to back up my library but it didn't seem to work. Should I just try that again or what?

[Tyler]

I would imagine all the naming should transfer fine, as both are running the iTunes program.

I'd dump them all on a flash drive, plug into your MBP and then drag and drop them into iTunes on your Mac.

Should work fine.

[Russic]

Might be worth grabbing an external hard drive and transferring that way.

[octothorp]

There are file-transfer USB cables out there... basically a USB cable that has firmware in it so that both your mac and pc will recognise it as a device, and allow you to transfer files across it. I think they cost about $40. I don't own one, but I've used on before and it's pretty slick. Make sure you get one that's USB 2.0; otherwise, it won't be any faster than a network transfer.

edit: here's one of them:
http://www.targus.ca/ca/product_details.asp?sku=ACC96CA

[ma-skis.com]

The fastest way for me was to hook my XP machine and macbook through a router. Then it's pretty easy to network them together through the Mac --> System Preferences --> Sharing --> Windows Sharing

Then go to your XP machine and load up the IP address/login they give you from the run command on XP.

sounds complicated, but it's super easy and you move your files as fast as your router can transfer data, and you won't need to buy any extra equipment.

Keep in mind you CANNOT plug an ethernet cable straight from one machine to the other, something about flipped pins on each machine, so you do need a router.

doing this also sets up a nice little network between your two machines in case you need to transfer big files or just want access to the files on the different machines.

[badradio]

Well I'm not sure if macbooks have a different ethernet setup than imacs but mine just plugged right in, whereas before on the older macs you had to have a switchover cable... but I don't know if macbooks are different... like ma-skis says the router setup is probably the best way to go if you plan on keeping your PC

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by badradio

Well I'm not sure if macbooks have a different ethernet setup than imacs but mine just plugged right in, whereas before on the older macs you had to have a switchover cable... but I don't know if macbooks are different... like ma-skis says the router setup is probably the best way to go if you plan on keeping your PC

Anything with gigabit ethernet should technically handle the crossover automatically, it's part of the standard that they do MDI detection. I bet it would even work if only one of the machines had gigabit.