That sequence as you described it did not work. It gave the error I described in the previous post. I repaired everything and its panties through the Disk Utility, but no luck.

I rebooted, and it came to a dejectedly flashing folder.

I rebooted back to command R, and it displayed a globe and said "internet repair". Whatever that was, it was the right thing. The install did not throw an error after that and ran through to the end. Which is good, because I was both putting on outside pants and calling AppleCare, pissed as fuck.

The amount of dependency on the internet is just...that is just not good. And I can't work out the ramification of some of these choices on the fly! What does allowing my Apple ID to reset my MacBook password mean? I'm assuming it gives me some way to get into my laptop should yesterday happen again, but it's not like they're explaining it before they ask.

Or maybe it was in the agreement that I pretended to read.

It sounds like the disk got well and truly toasted.

The internet repair is a last line. Basically if the disk is too far gone, or you install a new disk that doesn't have the repair image on it, then the machine will look for an internet connection, connect to Apple servers, and stream a clean install from there.

I found it pretty frustrating that in my attempts to get past the toast I made of the security credentials I ended up running four reinstalls of Lion and each one had a two hour pre-installation download of "components". There's really no way to make that more streamlined? Does every MacBook Pro sale assume such internet ubiquity, or are the Apple Store lines longer in other environments?

Still, I'm typing on the new machine now, and it's pretty and silky and it's all mine!

As long as I let it have Internet, it seems.

So, whenever I have had a new mac, I have not had much to setup. You are right that installation of a new operating system can take a bit, but for the most part, it did not take me that long on either of the two machines on which I installed Lion.

I am not sure WTF I will do about Mountain Lion because I have Lion on ONE computer and have Snow Leopard on the other computer I use a lot. I guess I'll have to get all on the same operating system soon.

If I'd done it right, I'd have been fine. It's just that the first time I completed it, I ended up with a login screen and no password to get past it. All the time and frustration and garbled posting was me trying to get past that.

I'm not going to use the migration assistant for anything, in the end. I'll get the hang of tweaking Lion myself, and hopefully end up with a tidier computer. I'll always have Time Capsules of the other box, and I might just copy over a few "popular" folders to the NAS so I can get to them from all the clients.

I have a new machine I need to setup today, but now I'm dealing with network accounts. I think this will make it easier, but I won't really know until I'm ankle deep in it. The home folder for this machine is now running from the server, so I think I can just copy the admin account, which should also copy all of the applications, and then I can log in with my network account credentials on the new box and I'll be good to go.

Does anyone here on OS X use any mail application other than what comes with the OS? And why? What was wrong with Mail, or is right with what you use instead?

And if you use Gmail, do you never download your mail?

I never use Mail.

On occasion, I use Thunderbird (especially when I need to do a mail merge).

I use mail in Google Chrome (gmail). I backup via Cloudpull.

I never download my email. I probably should.

Apple Mail is good enough for me.