Re: Best way to migrate ALL win XP apps & data to NEW laptop?

ben wrote:

> What I'm doing is using my computer. I don't download, I don't install
> new apps, I just work away. But general usage takes its toll and will
> slow it down. Now I could spend 30mins clearing the prefetch/temp
> folders, or 2mins restoring from an image. To be honest, any REAL
> poweruser would find themselves doing a complete wipe every month, at
> least once! It just isn't beneficial to be running a system full of
> ***.

Now that's something I've been looking at undecidedly for some time. While
it seems that you are right in that Windows can deteriorate just by using
it, it also seems to me that you are not actually /working/ with your
computer, at least not the way I do. Whenever I work on my computer, the
work leaves tracks in the system and the applications; tracks that I might
need or want later, like configuration options. (I'm not talking about data
files here...) Restoring an image from a month ago is certain to wipe part
of the results of my work in that month, even if I don't touch the data
files. So I'd have to make a list of all changes considered permanent and
re-apply them after the restore; that's an administrative effort I've never
been disciplined enough to really undertake.

In the end, it boils down to three observations:
- Some drivers are not written very well, and most of the issues you can
expect from moving from one hardware platform to another are driver
problems due to unstable drivers,
- Windows is not really well-designed for this task (of moving a setup to
another computer),
- and Windows does seem to deteriorate (more or less) just from using it,
which may make it attractive to some users to reinstall when moving to a
different hardware. (But this attraction is a lot lower if it takes you a
week until you have a system that has everything running almost as the
previous one had it...)

Gerhard
.