Yes to Lion, no to cruft: get a clean start with manual Mac migration [ars technica]

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. 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.

Although all of this is inspired by the imminent arrival of Mac OS 10.7 Lion, the information here is not Lion-specific; I have tested the various migration tactics on Snow Leopard. However, most of them are more application- than OS-specific.

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article by By Iljitsch van Beijnum