How to swap the content on two Mac computers?

That is a bit tricky since you want to swap. How I would do this is a external drive. Make two partitions. Make sure both partitions are big enough to hold what is on your respective computers. Use SuperDuper and go from there.

Everyone should have a external for back-up.

I can think of a few other ways if you don’t have a external but they are a bit risky and I won’t post them since I don’t want to be responsible if something goes wrong.

You could also use Migration Assistant in Applications/Utilities. It ain’t pretty but it works if you are on the same Network.

Have you thought about upgrading both machines to the same OS, and just swapping apps and content?

>>Have you thought about upgrading both machines to the same OS, and just swapping apps and content?

I can upgrade the iMac to the latest OS. Will this make the process easier?

I’m thinking the external drive is the way to go. I’m particularly interested in maintaining the Parallels/XP option that exists now in the laptop onto the iMac after the swap.

Carbon Copy Cloner is another tool that you may want to check out.

Having both machines running the same version of OSX is going to make things much easier.

Before you do anything, you need to do a little analysis of what you have on each computer. Starting with the same OS is going to make things easier. Next, on paper, look at the apps that are on each machine. For the apps that are the same, you don’t need to reload the app, you just need to move the files from one computer to the other. Then on computer A, install the apps that were on computer B that you want access to. Do the same for computer B. Before do update either OS or move files, do a backup. Then use a different HD to move the files. The file organization on Mac is pretty straightforward, and it’s pretty easy to copy files over. Moving stuff around like this is a good opportunity to do a little digital housekeeping.