With Vista approaching our PCs next year like a 1970's shag-mobile that has a weird start-and-stop brake problem, many PC users will be hard pressed to find an easy way to move everything from your XP machine, to that spankin-new Vista machine you'll get during the holidays this year. I won't have this problem, since I back everything up and am accustomed to reinstalling everything anyway, but my family will need an easier way. Microsoft's new "Windows Easy Transfer" idea is supposed to be able to handle this all-too-common problem of moving everything to a new digital home. It will consist of a special transfer cable or use of your network and a piece of software to handle the transfer. Sounds simple enough right? Personally I am skeptical on this one. Microsoft has been pretty out-to-lunch with past "pc-to-pc transfer" ideas in the past, which makes me wonder if this will be a viable route for the general populace to use in practice. Hopefully Microsoft has figured it out, because it would really help the adoption of Vista among many people who consider easily moving their stuff to a new PC a deal-breaker for buying one in the first place. Look for Microsoft's new "Windows Easy Transfer" product being sold by cable vendors. My guess is that it will available for sale around January or February of 2007 in tandem with Vista (for consumers).
Tags: commercial, hardware, Microsoft, news, osupdates, transfer, vista, windows, xp
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Comments
7
Subscribe to commentsMarc OrchantOct 28th 2006 8:31PM
Ryan - this is not a home-grown product. Microsoft bought PC Relocater Plus last year in preparation for the Visat migration and that product has always worked well for me in the past. SO I'm optimistic this Easy Transfer tool may actually meet many peoples' needs.
DuckOct 29th 2006 1:27AM
Wait, I've been using this thing on Mac for the last 2-3 years..
Bout time they caught up.
Also, having to use a "special" USB cable kinda sucks, it's like having a cable you'll only ever use once. The mac one uses a Firewire cable.
Duck
KevOct 29th 2006 11:16AM
Btw, unlike some third-party software, it doesn't attempt to transfer applications themselves—you need to install your apps first.
MysteriusOct 29th 2006 1:22PM
@Duck: The article says that you need either a special transfer cable or your network and the piece of software. So you don't have to get the transfer cable; it's only to make things easier for those who don't want to install the transfer software on their own.
DiRTOct 29th 2006 2:29PM
@Duck:
Sure, but then you're still stuck on a Mac.
randomOct 29th 2006 7:12PM
stuck.. on a mac.. dont make me laugh its the windows users that are stuck on a platform that always seems to find new ways to make things harder for its users, and always get in the way of the things that you would actually be trying to do. I think of vista as OS X 10.0. and yes, i did have a go with vista, but like thousands of others, if i could pick, i'd stick with xp. Good to see MS doing the thing they do best again, borrowing ideas from the creative minds. thats exactly why windows will always be eating the mac's dust.
anyway, here i go with my anti-windows thing again, sorry, but windows frustrated me so much that ive put the fun back in computing and chose the way of the fruit
JSCablemanNov 25th 2006 10:01PM
If you're intested in the more information on the easy transfer cable visit BAFO's website. www.bafo.com.