Laptops All-in-One Desk Reference For Dummies- P16: Okay, I’ll admit it: I’ve got a strange biography. I’ve been a writer all my life. My first semi-pro job was sports editor of my high school newspaper. (Go Commodores!) After college I was a political reporter for daily newspapers in Ohio and New York (I covered four national nominating conventions and two Presidential campaigns) and a correspondent for The Associated Press. And then, in 1983, I gave in to my inner geek and became the first Executive Editor of PC Magazine, back in the days when most people asked, “What is a PC?”. | 124 Using Windows Easy Transfer Internet favorites E-mail settings E-mail contacts and address books E-mail messages What can t you transfer In a word software. Okay a few more words And the operating system. Software and the operating system can t be automatically transferred by Windows for two pretty good reasons It s dangerous. You could end up moving a corrupted or outdated version of programming to an otherwise unsullied machine. And your new machine may be organized differently than the old machine different labels for hard disk drives different folder names a different file attribute system . Some third-party software programs not from Microsoft promise to move software from one machine to another. I ve even seen them work. But I can t guarantee 100 percent success with them especially as software makers move to sophisticated validation schemes for their offerings. It s unseemly. The license for your software or operating system may not allow transfer to a different machine without the manufacturer s permission. Like it or not software makers are becoming more insistent on treating their work as if it were a physical object you can move it from one place to another with permission but you can t clone it so it exists in two places at the same time. Some software makers offer multiple-machine licenses that permit installation of their products on two or more machines. That s a pretty good deal for a laptop if you want to have the same program on your laptop as you have on your desk. Using Windows Easy Transfer Microsoft lays it on the line with the name of their utility in Windows Vista. Easy Transfer is supposed to be an automated tool that does all the heavy lifting of bits and bytes and transfers them to a new machine. And to a great degree what they say is what you get. Access to the transfer program is one of the choices on the Welcome Center screen that insists on popping up every time you start Windows Vista . . . until you uncheck the little box at the
