1. Fear, Loathing and a Laptop Upgrade

It’s almost time for me to upgrade to a new laptop and I’ve got to tell you, I’m dreading the experience. What really makes my blood boil is Microsoft’s refusal to lead software manufacturers in an assault on the greatest barrier to upgrading to a new laptop, other than the price of the damn things, the misery of reinstalling piles of software after you upgrade.

Now, before you call me a dumb ass, let me acknowledge that I know all about those products that let you backup and re-install your entire system onto almost any new hardware. Using them is usually totally legit, if you have licenses for all your software and your old system’s disk drive has either crashed beyond recognition or you’ve actually wiped your disk clean. Back when I worked in IT, we even used programs like Norton Ghost to create laptop-after-laptop from a single image. We had site licenses for all the software from the OS to the smallest utility, so, we were perfectly legal.

But, that was then, when my department was responsible for churning out hundreds of laptops a year. Now, I just have to worry about my little old Toshiba Satellite and what I’m going to do when the next generation model shows up on my desk. I know it’s already lurking out there. If nothing else, working in the tech journalism business keeps you well abreast of coming technologies.

Windows Vista Complete Backup can completely back up a system. But, can it restore a backup to a new system?

What I want is a simple and quick way to back up my old laptop in its entirety and then restore the backup to my new laptop. And, I’m not even asking for an XP-to-Vista backup-restore. Vista-to-Vista would be just fine for me. I don’t want to have to buy some product to accomplish this task. I want to use simple tools that are built into the Windows operating system. Sure, there’s Vista’s Complete PC Backup/Restore utility. But, it only works when you’re recovering to the same laptop.

I know. I’ve been there. Yes, I’ve been a soldier in the laptop upgrade wars several times. Last time it was an upgrade from a Toshiba Portégé to my current Satellite. The Portégé was running Vista Ultimate. So, I did a full system backup of the Portégé to an external USB hard disk drive, using Vista’s built-in backup software. Then to be sure my backup was good, I wiped Vista off the Portégé’s hard drive and restored from the backup. Worked like a charm. So, then I wiped Vista off of the Satellite’s disk drive, connected the external drive with the Portégé backup to the Satellite and booted the laptop.

When offered the opportunity to recover the system drive, I accepted. The recovery tootled on merrily. However, when the Satellite tried to reboot after the alleged recovery, it was clear the “recovery” hadn’t worked. Too many things were different about the Satellite’s hardware when compared to the Portégé’s hardware. Windows had protected Microsoft and the numerous manufacturers of software on the Portégé from that horror of all horrors: THE EVIL SOFTWARE PIRATE, ME.