At least they get some things right
Now, any of you who know me know that I’m certainly no Apple apologist, and rarely do I recommend that people switch platforms (either from Mac to PC or PC to Mac) — there’s a *lot* involved when changing religions there, and for most folks it’s not worth it. That said, I do find more and more instances these days where Apple simply has a huge leg up on the alternatives, and this morning I was reminded of it yet again.
An old client (who now lives in a different region of the country than I do) e-mailed me and said, basically, “Please explain how to move everything from the old Aptiva to my new Dell.” My first reaction: choke. Then I figured I’d spell it out for him, so he could decide whether or not to hire someone locally to perform this task for him. My response:
In a very general sense, you need to:
a) Figure out what data you want to move (documents, e-mail data, bookmarks/favorites, etc)
b) Figure out *where* on the drive it is (documents are easy, e-mail data is most definitely NOT)
c) Figure out if it can simply be copied (with some documents and *some* favorites they can) or if it needs to be exported from the old machine, copied, and then imported into the new one (databases, e-mail boxes/accounts, etc)
d) Decide how you’re going to get the appropriate data from one computer to the other (shared network drives over wired/wireless network connection, burning a cd, floppy, etc)
e) Perform steps based on a-d.
I then recommended that he should likely hire someone. As soon as I fired off that e-mail, I was hit with it, and send him a follow-up thusly:
Of course, as I was finishing that e-mail, I thought to myself, “now, if he had a Mac, my answer would have been 100% different.” Just to show you,it would have been:
a) start new Mac
b) follow the on-screen instructions provided to you on how to connect the two together and let the operating system migrate your data for you
With Tiger’s (and Panther 10.3.4+’s) Migration Assistant, this *exact* process (one that used to plague ALL of us when we bought a new machine) is now boiled down into something that’s not just easy, it’s downright pleasant!
Anyway, thought I’d share.
December 7th, 2005 at 2:29 pm
This is a big YMMV, but if the two machines both have XP on them you could use “Files and Settings Transfer Wizard” under System Tools to acomplish part of the task. I have done it once as a Proof of Concept and it was very good for a limited set of your data. As you have pointed out, applications RARELY move via copy in a windows environment. Thanks.