The one time that I really envy Mac users is when I get a new PC. It is just so friggin hard to get all of your applications, settings, and data transitioned from one PC to another. I did give the “Windows Easy Transfer” tool a whirl but after leaving the house for a few hours I returned to find the screens of both PCs exactly as I’d left them. There was a blinking icon on it’s menu bar but fuck if I know what it meant. In my experience the last time around, coming from XP, the tool doesn’t capture enough settings to be worth the time anyways.
I also tried just restoring the old PC to the new via WHS, but as you might expect the system wound up a bit wonky. It doesn’t help that Dell’s “Driver CD” is a collection of self-extracting archives instead of ready-to-use drivers. Sure, they provide a tool to help identify which drivers you need, but there’s no “Extract all of my needed drivers” button. This particular pain is hardly unique to Dell and I’ve yet to witness a PC vendor getting it completely right.
So I restored back to the as-shipped configuration (thank you WHS). Ran an upgrade to Ultimate. Activation failed but the friendly Indian-sounding gentleman that answered Microsoft’s toll-free number gave me the digits to over-ride. Still can’t remember WTF is so special about Ultimate, but just the same I’m glad to not have throw away the money I spent on the license.
Decided that the best migration path was just to copy as much of my profile directory as I could. With Vista, Microsoft has made it both easier and harder to migrate a profile. Easier in that the directory structure isn’t so retarded. Harder in that they’ve thrown junction points all over the place for compatibility with crappy programs. And there are still places where you’ll have file paths too long for Explorer to cope with on a drag-n-drop copy. But ultimately it wasn’t too hard and a surprising number of settings made the transition.
Harder is getting all of my applications installed. The “free” stuff is easy — just download the latest version from whatever web site it came from. Finding the installers for programs I paid for ten years ago and haven’t upgraded since is much harder (Paint Shop Pro 6.02 for life!). Thankfully most of these ancient programs don’t require product keys because then I’d be completely screwed.
How many decade-old Mac programs will run just fine on a brand new MacBook Air?
Still missing a few newer things that will have to be installed as I locate their CDs and keys. Nothing I can’t live without for a few days or weeks. I’ve done one last backup of the old PC, now comes the time to shut it and transfer all of the peripherals… Fun.
