OT - Computer Help - New Laptop, Moving hard-drive files & programs Options

[riverman]

I'm picking my new laptop this afternoon and I want to know if I need to buy additional cables or anything while I'm down there.

I want to transfer all the programs and files from my old computer to my new one. I see that Microsoft XP has a file transfer wizard, but will this transfer stuff like my Firefox (and all the bookmarks), Google desktop, Adware, Adobe and such? What about my subcription programs like my internet, anti-virus and i-tunes - will I be able to transfer them, or will I have to re-subscribe? How is the transfer done? Do you burn discs or can you hook the two machines together? I just want my new machine to work sort of like my old one (only better) and I don't want to f'ing around loading software all night.

[Steve Thacker]

The cheapest and fastest thing to get is a cross-over network cable, so you can hook this between the two PCs network interfaces. then you need to (share) the whole C: drive (C$) with all full access rights of the old PC. Then you can pull over anything you desire.

Original Programs:
On the New PC you will need to reinstall your legacy programs to emulate the old PC, i.e internet packages, anti-virus, bookmarks etc. Settings and things of that nature may need to be reconfigured unless the settings for each program are stored in a .ini format. Yes once you install the original program on the new PC, you can copy whole directories from the old to the new. Sometimes this grabs configuration settings with them.

Browser:
The simplest way to do this is locate all your IE (internet explorer bookmarks), copy and paste them to same directory on new PC.