Moving to Windows 7

Moving to Windows 7

Hundreds of millions of people use Windows XP. Also, those who have bought Netbooks have preferred to go along with it. But how do you get the much better Windows 7 on your computer?

Migrating to Windows 7 from Vista is easier. All your programs are preserved, files intact, and the computer runs faster. But this is not going to be the case with Windows XP. In fact, it may even be frustrating, tedious and painful.

Microsoft is not allowing any upgrades from Windows XP. They want you to do a clean install. This means even before you upgrade your computer to Windows 7 you have to perform a step that wipes off your hard disk. All your programs, files, settings have to go. This can be done manually or through the wizard on the Windows 7 installation disk. Although Microsoft has provided a saving grace whereby you can preserve your photos, music, documents and other files, it can be quite clumsy. You have to offload them from the PC to an external hard disk. Then when Windows 7 has been loaded on your PC, you have to reload them. You can do this manually or through Easy Transfer, a program Microsoft will give you. But even this will not preserve your earlier programs.

Microsoft asks you to gather those installation files of your old programs and reload them again onto your Windows 7 PC. But who keeps all these files? Most of us delete them after the program has been loaded. Also, the programs have upgrades from time to time.

So what is the solution? Microsoft recommends you buy a new computer with Windows 7 preloaded. Even if the configuration of your old computer qualifies for Windows 7, it is not a great candidate for the new operating system. There have been several hardware changes and Windows 7 must be able to work seamlessly with the new hardware.

Now if you insist on keeping your old PC with Windows XP and moving to Windows 7, you will have to spend about $20 to buy Laplink’s PCmover. PCmover essentially provides the upgrade option that Microsoft does not. With it you can preserve your old programs, photos, songs and other files. It creates a package of all your applications and data and bundles them up on your existing disk or an external hard disk. After you have installed Windows 7, run the PCmover program and it reinstalls all your old programs and restores photos, songs and other files.

PCmover comes in three versions. The $20 option allows you to migrate to Windows 7 on a single computer. Then there is the $40 version that allows you to do almost any thing like moving programs and files from an old PC to a new one. Finally, there is the $50 special version that gives you more control on what is moved. If you are going to be moving your programs to a new computer, the $50 special version is a bargain because it comes with a cable. These cables otherwise cost around $40.

I don’t know why Microsoft makes upgrades so difficult. Apple has had a Migration Assistant for years. If you get a new Mac it will find the old Mac on the same network and move over all your programs, logins and passwords, settings and data.

However, to be fair to Microsoft, moving Windows programs is more difficult than moving Mac programs. Windows programs are scattered all over your file system. Windows has to gather all these pieces and put them together before it can start moving them. So there is a high chance of things going wrong.