Now that I've had my new 13" MacBook Pro running for a couple of days I've discovered a couple of things and thought they'd be worth sharing.

New sound drivers and output hardware

Many Mac users take the easy way when migrating from one computer to the next. Use an application like Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper to clone your old system to an external hard drive and then either clone that back to your new system or use the Migration Assistant to bring all your user data and applications across. As the transfer to my new MacBook Prowas done for me from the by the crew at the local Apple store I suspect they used the first approach - cloning.

All looked fine until I went to check out the latest edition of the Australian Macworld podcast. At that stage I discovered that I had no sound and that the computer didn't recognise the existence of any sound output devices. Strange, as the MacBook Pro made the customary start-up "bong" when booting up. That made me pretty certain that I didn't have a hardware problem.

After some searching (not surprisingly, there wasn't much help online as the unit is so new) I decided to reinstall the operating system using the "Archive and Install" mode and also using the option that lets me retain all my personal settings and applications.

An hour later and all was well. I now have sound and any settings that I need to find are in a folder called "Previous System".

Power Output from USB and Firewire

I have a bunch of external hard drives in the office at the moment and thought I'd try some out with the 13" MacBook Pro. Well, thus far powered drives seem OK but smaller bus-powered units aren't working. I've tried a couple and they just connect and disconnect. I've tried multiple cables and different drives without success.

I won't name the brands in question yet and I have several other drives to try out but at this stage it seems that external drives that are meant to get their power purely from the USB or Firewire bus are a problem.