Making the Jump to Windows 7 With PCmover

Information Today - Vol. 27, Issue 1, January 2010  - Kurt Schiller
Jan 1, 2010
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With the release of Windows 7, businesses are again weighing the benefits of a new as against the hassle of officewide upgrades and reinstallations. The prospect of digging through storage for dusty installation CDs, not to mention the time-consuming task of reinstalling everything, is enough to give even the most experienced user's second thoughts.

Enter Laplink Software's PCmover migration software. Laplink has targeted one of the biggest hassles of upgrades and migration to new PCs: reinstalling and configuring software. In addition to being able to relocate data from one machine to another, the program lets users transfer many of their installed programs, leaving them ready-to-use even when moved to a newer operating system.

Randy Clark, Laplink's COO,explains that PCmover uses proprietary algorithms to automate the process for a user to get programs running again. "Transferring applications is especially tricky," he says. "To do this properly, various install routines are effectively emulated as part of the transfer process." However, Clark notes that not all programs can be properly transferred.  Software with especially complex licensing systems or one that is deeply integrated with the as (such as antivirus software) may need to be reinstalled by hand.

A unique factor In Windows 7's r lease is the fact that despite the continued widespread use of XP,only users of the mor r cent Vista as can upgrade directly to Windows 7 without having to completely reinstall. With this market in mind, Laplink also developed an edition of PCmover called Upgrade Assistant that is designed for users who want to put Windows 7 on a machine currently running Windows 2000 or XP. When used in conjunction with a Windows 7 installation, it allows users to retain many settings and installed programs that would otherwise be lost or rendered nonfunctional by installing a new OS.

Of course, for people migrating to Windows 7 on new PCs, transferring all that data will still take time. Clark estimates the time at about an hour per 10GB of data. "Keep in mind that large amounts of data take time to transfer; we can't change the laws of physics," says Clark. "But one advantage of PCmover Is that the file transfer process will run unattended, so you can 'set it and forget it' so to speak."

-Kurt Schiller