Move it or Lose it: PCmover

Smart Computing  - Editors
Nov 1, 2006

Migrating data from one system to another is the digital equivalent of moving personal possessions from one home to another. Both situations require time, thoroughness, and a great deal of care to make sure nothing gets broken or left behind. For more than 20 years, Laplink products have functioned like a reliable friend with a truck to countless PC users needing to move their digital possessions into new digs. That experience shows in the company’s popular utility, PCmover.

The utility offers several methods for transferring data. Users can migrate their data via removable media (such as a Zip disk, tape cartridge, or recordable CD), virtually any functioning network connection, and direct parallel or USB cable connection (the boxed version of the utility comes bundled with a USB cable). The amount of time involved is what distinguishes one migration method from another. A USB migration is faster than a parallel migration, for instance, and any network connection is faster than copying the data to removable media. Otherwise, the process is generally the same for all migration methods.

After an effortless installation, which typically needs to be performed on all systems participating in the migration process, an intuitive wizard helps the user look for updates and launch the migration. We found the experience to be surprisingly easy. Each step was carefully explained and accompanied by a thorough Help file. PCmover automatically analyzed the contents of the new computer, compared its findings to the contents of the old computer, and then moved all unique files and settings to the new computer. Most of the migration was handled by PCmover, although the utility let us specify whether we wanted to migrate certain personal settings, including those that related to our Outlook mailboxes, Microsoft Word settings, and browser settings.

PCmover was able to transfer programs as well as program settings and personal data files, which is somewhat unusual for a migration utility. Moving programs is a complex task, and PCmover proceeds cautiously when doing so. It will not move copyright-protected software, hardware-dependent software, or software with nontransferable settings (for example, antivirus utilities). It also restricts the transfer of Outlook and Outlook Express accounts under certain circumstances: For instance, PCmover will not overwrite an Outlook file that already exists on the new machine. We look upon these restrictions as precautions rather than limitations; after all, other migration utilities, such as Easy PC Transfer and IntelliMover, won’t migrate any programs at all.

In addition to its support for program migrations, PCmover can handle multiuser migrations and boasts an undo option for reversing migrations. Perhaps best of all, Laplink provides multiple support options, giving users the option of participating in online chat sessions and receiving phone-based support. Our only complaint with the utility is that it does not provide an easy method of migrating data from one drive to another within a single system. It can be done, but only by physically swapping the internal drive cables in the middle of the migration process—and that’s a serious hassle.