Brendan, You could buy a copy of Leopard and upgrade the MacBook, then you can clone away to the MacBook Pro knowing you are on the latest version. And you also would have a up to date MacBook to keep or sell.

NO, you do not want to do this! I know it seems like an obvious workaround but this is a bad idea for a machine with FCS installed for the exact reasons that OS upgrades are best done as clean installs, in which case you are back to square one with having to copy files manually.

For apps that are as intricately intertwined with the OS as NLEs (and this goes for Avid and Final Cut, on Windows or OS X), it is crucial to have a stable install of both the OS and the NLE software. No upgrade path other than a clean install can provide this. Forums here and elsewhere are full of posts from people who have experienced debilitating stability issues due to a less than solid installation by the sort of upgrade path that James is recommending. You need a clean install of your OS, not an upgrade.

It's not an exciting prospect to have to do all that work, but if you want to ensure you have a good install then you need to put work into it. You need a clean install of your OS and apps, which means installing the OS, doing whatever updates you need, and then installing your NLE (and then whatever updates you need to the NLE).

mike,

I feared that this would be the response I got on this topic:)

Def gonna b a PITA, but I definitely want to ensure that everything will run smoothly on the new machine, so it looks like the route I'll take, clean installs of everything...gonna need a personal day for that..haha

And another one for after that. ;-D

it's the right thing to do. You know the old saying about an ounce of prevention, right? It is very tempting to take short cuts in this, but the headache you avoid by doing it right at the beginning is well worth it. There is no price on peace of mind.