Q&A: Moving Into a New MacBook Air

Q. I have a MacBook Air running Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6.8) and I am considering buying a new MacBook Air with the Mountain Lion (OS X 10.8) operating system. I have accumulated a large number of files over the years in various applications (notably Microsoft Word and Excel, Pages, Keynote and Keychain) on my current machine. Will I be able to readily move these to the new Mac?

A. The Migration Assistant program included over the last few years with Mac OS X moves pretty much all personal information — user accounts, settings, Keychain password, files, folders and programs — on the old computer over to the new one. As long as your programs are compatible with the newer version of Mac OS X, they should run fine, but you may want to look for any free software updates that may be available.

Checking the system requirements for your most-used programs before you do the transfer can help you plan for any new versions you may have to buy. Programs that will not run on the newer system are automatically moved to a folder labeled Incompatible Software. If you try to use a program in this folder, the Mac usually refuses to open it and presents a system alert advising you to go get a compatible version.

To actually transfer the files, you can connect the two MacBook Air computers over a wireless network or with a cable connected to each machine’s ThunderBolt port (if both Airs have one). If you use an external USB drive running Apple’s Time Machine software to back up your computer, you can also transfer the data from the old computer to the new one with a USB drive.

Mountain Lion is Apple’s latest version of the Mac operating system, but the company plans to release a new one soon. Code-named Mavericks (after a popular surfing area in California), OS X 10.9 could arrive within the month. If you want a new computer with the absolute latest operating system preinstalled, you may want to hold off on buying a new one unless you want to update it yourself.

Screening Search Results From Bing

Q. Is there a way to block sex-related material from showing up in Bing search results?

A. Microsoft’s search engine, Bing, includes a SafeSearch filter for weeding out explicit images and sexually oriented content from search results. By default, the filter may be set to Moderate, in which explicit images and videos are blocked from search results, but not text. If you want to increase the level of filtering, you can choose the Strict setting, which blocks text, images and videos from turning up in results.

You can change the filter on your Bing Settings page, where you can also find links for reporting any content that managed to slip by SafeSearch. The third option for the SafeSearch filter is one that turns it off entirely, which does not block sex-related content.

Yahoo and Google also have the SafeSearch filter. (Late last year, Google even changed its own SafeSearch settings to automatically exclude sex-related content from image search results.)

For parents, the Web also has several heavily filtered search engines designed just for children. Common Sense Media has a guide to helping youngsters search the Web more safely and responsibly.