PCmover PC Magazine Review

PC Magazine  - Michael Muchmore
Sep 25, 2009
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XP users eager to move up to the new Microsoft OS everyone's raving about are in for rude awakening: The Windows 7 installer doesn't offer the Upgrade option to users moving from Windows XP to Windows 7. So if you bypassed Vista, you're forced to go through installations again for all your applications. Windows 7's Easy Transfer tool works for documents, settings, e-mails, and users, but it won't actually transfer programs. To the rescue comes Laplink's PCmover, which the company claims is the only software utility that can transfer programs from XP to Windows 7. In my testing, PCmover proved itself more than up to the task. It won't be available until early October, well in time for Windows 7's launch, but it's such a cool product that we decided to tell you about it now so that you can plan ahead.

Setting Up for Moving On
PCmover is available in three versions: the $19.95 one-time-use Windows 7 upgrade version, the $39.95 Home edition, and the $59.95 Professional edition, which adds the ability to select which apps to move, migrates domain users, and comes with transfer cables. Thankfully, all versions include the ability to undo the whole operation. I tested the latest version of Professional, which includes the Windows 7 migration capability. The $19.95 version simply restricts you to one in-place XP-to-Windows 7 migration; otherwise the procedure is the same. In all versions of the application, you get one move for your money.

To keep up with the times, I tested using a netbook—a Toshiba mini NB205 with a 1.66-GHz Intel Atom processor, 1GB RAM, and a 150GB hard disk. Notable apps installed on the Windows XP system included Picasa, Firefox, Microsoft Office 2007, Norton Internet Security 2010 , and a host of included Toshiba utilities. PCmover lets you transfer from an old PC to a new one, but I thought the most interesting scenario would be to upgrade the netbook in place.

PCmover takes you through a comforting step-by-step wizard process for the migration, with warnings and instructions along the way. Since you just have one shot at moving everything to Windows 7, I recommend reading and even printing the PDF Quick Start Guide before you start, just to make sure all your ducks are in a row. Before installing PCmover, you're cautioned that you shouldn't try to move data from a newer OS to an older one, which makes sense. You should also be certain to download any available updates to your apps and your OS. One nit to pick: The installer tries to get you to add a browser toolbar—something I frown upon in software you're already paying for.

There are a few things Laplink admits the software can't transfer, including hardware drivers and software that uses its own hardware drivers, such as antivirus apps; copy-protected multimedia files may also not play after the move. By default, PCmover doesn't move browser toolbars, so if you have one you like, you'll need to install it after the upgrade. Software that requires activation (such as Microsoft Office) may require it again after the transfer, and of course, software that isn't compatible with Windows 7 (or Vista) won't magically become operational because PCmover transferred it. And in some cases you'll need to deactivate software on the old PC first and then activate again after the move.

After okaying the warning about copy-protected content possibly not working, other pre-migration precautions include making the sure power-saving mode and screensavers are turned off. To start the actual process, you choose Old Computer on the wizard's next page. Then you'll need to enter a serial number, unless you only want to use the trial version, which lets you only move one type of file (such as Word documents).

PCmover lets you choose user accounts to include or exclude—by default, all are included. Also by default, this screen in the wizard only shows "regular" users, not system, network, and PC vendor support accounts, which are all set to be included in the migration. You can move data from multiple drives, too.

The Great Migration
Now the wizard starts looking for apps to move. When the scan is done, you get a list with check boxes for every app on the computer—I think this is a great way to unload unwanted software. After the apps have been found, PCmover is ready to start building a journal that tells it what to put where in the new setup. Then it's ready to transfer.

On my test system, it reported 31,917 files and 250,501 settings, for a grand total of 10GB. I did wonder, however, if a lot of those settings were Registry clutter, and apparently they were: Installing my apps on the clean XP installation required 25MB of Registry space, but doing the same in Windows 7 needed just 16MB. If your destination drive doesn't have enough free space available, PCmover lets you know before it's too late.

The utility begins the transfer by creating what it calls a Moving Van file, which contains instructions about what to move. The wizard lets you know that filling it can take several hours, but because mine was being created on the local hard drive, my Moving Van needed just a minute.

Now it's time to install Windows 7. You need to start from the DVD drive and choose Custom rather than Upgrade, as Microsoft doesn't support upgrading from XP. After Windows 7 installs, you install PCmover again in the new OS then unload the Moving Van by locating the previously created file. You have a choice of copying or moving, the latter of which saves disk space. At this point you choose which user profiles to map to user profiles in the new setup. If you have multiple drive letters and don't want one migrated, you can choose Change Destination and then Do Not Migrate This Drive (this is useful for things like image partitions).

When I'd made these choices, my final migration started, with an estimated time of 23 minutes—r easonable for the number of apps I had installed. The process took about 15 minutes. The progress bar is smart, and Item and Action fields show you what's actually being moved. Before it was even done, my application icons started magically appearing on the desktop. I could view a summary report of performed actions and save it as an Excel worksheet. A reboot was recommended and triggered by default. After that, both of my test User profiles were maintained, though not their icons

Despite all the warnings about programs requiring activation and those that use activations, my Microsoft Office Ultimate apps, which fall under the first category, and as mentioned, Norton Internet Security, which falls under the second, came through the migration successfully. My Picasa photo organizer/editor and Firefox browser were just as before. And my documents and pictures were right where they belonged, despite Windows 7's use of Libraries as opposed to the more plain-Jane folders used in XP.

Remarkably, this upgrade from XP to 7 took less time on this low-power netbook than a Vista-to-7 upgrade using Microsoft's own upgrade option did on a far more powerful laptop. In addition to taking longer, the Vista to Window 7 option didn't give me any options about what apps to migrate and which programs should be allowed to run at startup. And remember that you can't even use Microsoft's upgrade option in many situations—if you're moving from one level of Vista to a different level in 7, say, from Home Premium to Professional, or from 32-bit Vista to 64-bit Windows 7. PCmover handles all these cases with aplomb.

Removing the Move
In case you change your mind, all versions of PCmover let you undo its work. Undoing the migration is a matter of running the software again and choosing "Undo previous migration." I tested this, and almost immediately the icons and Start menu entries for moved apps disappeared. In fact, the whole undo operation took just two minutes.

Note that this doesn't undo the Windows 7 upgrade, just the moved apps, documents, and settings. And in my test it actually still left the program folders and some supporting files (such as DLLs)—s o it doesn't undo everything.

Laplink PCmover is an impressive piece of software for those who want to move on to Microsoft's latest and much-praised new operating system without losing all their precious apps and settings. It's worth the price of purchase for Vista users, because it's better than what Microsoft offers, and it can be a life saver for XP users, who aren't supported at all. Some of its processes seem geared towards migrations between two machines as opposed to an in-place upgrade, but that's a minor inconvenience. I think LapLink has addressed what is possibly the biggest obstacle to anyone wanting to upgrade to Windows 7, and I can't recommend the software highly enough.

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