Along these same lines....
 

I have a Dual USB iBook and am about to receive (Postal Service willing) a new 17" iMac. I plan to partition the iMac's drive and was wondering if I would run into problems if I simply clone the iBook's singe partition as the iMac's boot (system) partition.

Specifically:

1 - Are there any system related hardware dependencies that might cause problems?

2 - Will I have any difficulty reinstalling any of the "free" software that comes with the iMac?

Hmmm... you might be pushing the envelope on that one. Theoretically - OS X should install hardware independent, unlike the older System installs that would install according to what hardware you were installing onto. Meaning "YES" you should theoretically be able to clone from one to the other. Now where this poses a problem is that often - machines coming out of the factory may have slightly modified/updated system installs than the ones you and I have on our latest System install disks. They may have little tweaks for that particular model, etc. You just never know.

Short answer: should be fine.

Long answer: maybe, maybe not... push the clone btn and see.... hahaha what have you got to loose....not like your new iMac will have any personal docs on it or anything, and I am sure it will have a System install and probably Restore disk included with it.

Well, I've got the iBook cloned to an external FireWire drive. I suppose I can just boot the iMac from that and see how it goes.

The iMac will have 10.2.5 on it as it was shipped before 10.2.6 came out. I would hope that the 10.2.6 that's on the iBook would have the latest tweaks....

That sounds like a great plan! And I bet your theory about the 10.2.6 update is correct.