I was contacted a few weeks back by Laplink. They gave me a free license of their PC Mover to try out.
Usually, I throw these requests away, but I have used various utilities from Laplink since the early 90s (Anyone remember those Laplink cables!?), and I really like this company. Still…it is a risk sending me something, since if I think it is crap I will say so (Especially since they sell remote control products that compete with ours!).
Essentially the software allows you to move your applications, settings, and user accounts from one computer to another. The cool part is you can move your XP system to your brand spanking new Windows 7 machine.
I did not have the time to try it out when they sent me the license, so I fired off an email to my friend Brett, and told him to report back.
He told me: “Works great, but it did have trouble moving my printers and secured content”
This is totally expected. It can move your apps and settings from XP to Windows 7, but it is not magic. If you have apps or drivers that are not Windows 7 compatible, it is still not going to work when you make the move. In addition, copy protected movies, music and files are going to stop working too. With applications like iTunes, you can easily fix this by re-authorizing the content for the new machine.
I wanted to do a writeup to talk about what Brett found, so I needed to do my own test and take some screen shots at the same time. Laplink was kind enough to give me an additional license to test.
This week is Thanksgiving here in the states, it was a perfect time to move my Dad’s computer from XP, to his new Windows 7 laptop.
Overall, the process is very simple. You first start with the new computer. It takes a snapshot to figure out what it does not need to move
It will scan through your registry, and create a snapshot file to be read by the old computer.
On the old computer, you can decide what user accounts to move to the new machine
And the applications you want to transfer
It has quite a few options for the way you move the settings:
In my case, I just used the storage option, since I had a large external hard drive connected to the PC.
It spent 20 or 30 minutes doing its business, and completed with a moving van file.
I brought the file over to the new machine, and about 30 minutes later it had all the settings and applications moved over.
Now again, it was not perfect. But this is really a compatibility issue with drivers and applications. I still had to go out and find the proper printer drivers. I suggest you uncheck any printer support applications when you make your transfer….those act real funky when the driver is missing.
All in all it saved me a ton of time, I was able to transfer a boat load of apps, without the pain of re-installing. After a few tweaks to the printer drivers, and removing a few old programs that no longer worked – the machine was working great.
Take a look at it at http://www.laplink.com/pcmover
