Is It Time To Upgrade Your Computer?

By NewsFactor Network | February 16, 2007

Most of you will only get chummy with Windows Vista when you buy a new computer. Your current PC may not be robust enough to run the latest version of Microsoft’s operating system well, making an upgrade unattractive if not impossible.

Still, even if you’re permanently retiring an old machine, there’s a ton of software, documents, pictures, music and other stuff you don’t want to leave behind. And you will want to bring along your preferences, from Web browser bookmarks to the picture you use as a background.

You can manually reload software and data and reconfigure preferences. It’s a major chore that may involve digging for installation disks and redownloading programs.

Data migration programs such as the LapLink PCmover software I’ve been testing can help you more simply transfer photos, music, Internet settings, files and more from one machine to the next. Such programs have been around for years. But the latest version of PCmover can handle Vista. (I did not test a new version of Detto Technologies’ IntelliMover that also works with Vista.)

You can connect a special USB transfer cable to both machines, or do the heavy lifting over a wired or wireless network. PCmover is available at retail (with a USB cable) for $60 or as a $50 (minus the cable) download.

Microsoft includes an Easy Transfer wizard in Vista that’s meant to make it, well, easy to move stuff between computers. But the Microsoft wizard cannot transfer actual applications such as Office or Quicken. Here’s the drill when what you’re hauling is bits and bytes:

Preparing for the Move

It’s important to note that stuff isn’t so much moved from one computer to another as copied. As a precaution, make backup copies of important data and programs on both machines.

Run anti-virus and anti-spyware programs on the old machine so as not to…

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