Upgrading to Leopard?

[wolfy357]

Hello all,
So heres the skinny:
I recently had my Macbook stolen, after much grieving I am going to buy a MBP to cheer myself up. Before my Macbook got stolen, I had backed up a bootable clone (thankfully) with SuperDuper to an external HD.

My backed up system: Macbook 10.4.8
Western Digital Firewire/USB 2.0 Combo External Drive. There are two GUID volumes currently mounted on the drive. ---Backup: Bootable Clone (via SuperDuper) of everything except music/movies, ---Storage: Movies/Music

Now, I know the new MBP's ship with Leopard probably on a disk. I would like to find the most painless way to restore my old files, music (30 GB in Itunes), and applications--without having to re-enter serial numbers for app's--and have everything functional in Leopard. Now, I know some of my older apps havent been updated for Leopard yet. Should I restore the bootable clone to the Tiger OS that will most likely come pre-installed on my new MBP? Or install Leopard first than copy over everything. I unfortunately have never had to do this, so I guess what I'm asking is what is the best step-by-step method to have everything functional in Leopard?

I have read apples doc on using migration assistant, I do not however have the most up-to-date firmware on my bootable 10.4.8 clone. It also seems Dnanian suggests trying an upgrade instead of MD. What's the best option?

Thanks,
-Drew