Customer Reviews

AlohaBob PC Relocator 2005 [Old Version]

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(14)

 

 

It's apparent that several of the other reviewers were not using AlohaBob PC Relocator Ultra Control 2005 because this software definitely DOES allow you to choose which programs and files you want to migrate to your new PC. There are 3 modes. If you choose "automatic" then you won't be able to select which files you want to transfer but if you choose "smart rank" or "expert" you select only those files you want to transfer to your new system.

The other thing is that you need to read the directions first! Both computers have to have the software installed and be "prepped." The process is not difficult but it does have to be done or the transfer will not work properly.

I had a three-year old PC running Windows XP and I was able to migrate all of my programs and files to a new PC running Windows XP. My old computer had about 20 GB of stuff on it and I transferred the files via a dual USB connection in about 3 hours. That included MS Office, SPS, NetObjects, Corel, and a host of other programs.

Everything works well on my new PC. I had to reinstall McAfee Antivirus software on the new computer along with one minor program but other than that, I am pleased. My applications, files, and preferences are just like I had them on my old computer.

Here is some background about me:
+ I've been developing software for over 7 years using Microsoft Technologies, so I am pretty comfortable with computer
+ I reinstall my PC every 12-18 months, so I already have a list of all the utilities/software that I use.
+ I also try to keep a list of all the changes that I make to the OS.
+ I always install all the latest-greatest updates/service packs, etc.

I've read a number of negative reviews, but then I read a review by John Meghly, who seemed to be another "techy" and he gave it thumbs up.

Unfortunately I didn't find this utility as useful and John did. Being a developer, I understand all the difficulties that PC Relocator has to deal with and unfortunately it wasn't able to.

I was moving from Latitude D600 to Latitude D610 with the same OS (WinXP Pro) and the same set of applications. I installed every application that I had on the original computer and was hoping that PC Relocator will just move over my preferences. I didn't need it to move my files as I keep everything inside "My Documents" and it was already being backed up.

After the move I found that I am not able to update or install any additions/updates to Microsoft Office. After searching for some time, i found a KB that mentions that this happens b/c of messed up registry and provided a utility that would remove all the wrong keys. Unfortunately that also forces you to reinstall Office. Later I also found out that it messed up my Visual Studio .NET 2003 installation and I had to go into registry and add some keys to fix it.

Here is my conlusion: if you are very technical and have very elaborate setup and are willing to spend a lot of time trying to make it work, I do not recommend it.

I would recommend the following (worked for me before)
+ use a good backup solution (i like Acronis True Image which allows you to backup complete drive)
+ reinstall all you programs on a new computer -- this will also allow you to install newer versions
+ move your files and keep your backups in case you forgot to move something.

Hope this helps

I don't know WHAT others are doing, but of all the migration software I've used, this is the ONLY one that worked. And it didn't merely work, it worked exceptionally well and exceptionally fast.

PC Relocator Ultra Control let me pick and choose what to transfer. Make sure you are an experienced computer user if you are going to pick and choose.

I was able to move complicated licensed software such as the Adobe Creative Suite 2 Premium, Macromedia Studio MX etc. Even my roboform came over with all the pertinent data.

Be logical when you choose. Don't transfer many explorer extenders, such as google toolbar or desktop search. They are quite easy to redownload.

Let me put this as simply as possible. If you are an experienced or expert computer user, and you want to move particular software, settings, and files from your old computer to your new computer, this is the software that will do it for you. I have no doubt that 90% of the trouble people have is trying to move things that they ought not move.

If you want to move software suites without reinstalling them, software you've had so long you lost the disk etc. then Ultra Control isn't just AN answer, it's the ONLY answer. (And if you buy it at the alohabob website, it's downloadable and you don't have to pay until AFTER the transfer!)

This is the one you have been looking for.

I purchased PC Relocator Ultra Control after reading favorable reviews in two leading PC magazines. I should have paid more attention to the opinions of real users.

Loading the software on my old and new computers was straightforward, but the actual transfer of programs and files was anything but. My old computer ran under Windows 98SE; my new one has Windows XP. Like another Amazon reviewer with the same operating systems, I was confronted with the user name "mismatch" between the two machines that he described in his remarks. The instructions provided for resolving this problem were unclear--at least to me.

When I finally was able to proceed with the migration, I was left with a mess on my new computer. When PC Relocator transferred my data files, it moved only about half of them. The error log that was provided after the transfer showed--next to the file names--that the remaining files were not found. Yet these files were stored in the same directories and subdirectories as other files that were transferred successfully. I could find no pattern to what was moved and what wasn't. Furthermore, my e-mail messages were all thrown into my inbox folder in Outlook, even though they were stored in numerous other folders on my old computer. It would have taken me hours to move the files to their correct folders on my new computer.

I exhausted my options to get technical assistance from Eisenworld, the manufacturer. The web site noted that it could take several days to receive a response to an e-mail question. I didn't want to wait that long. I then tried to set up a "live chat" session on the web site with a technical support representative. No representatives were available. The Ultra Control version of PC Relocator comes with "free telephone support," so I called the company. All I got was a message saying that no one was available, and, if I left my number, someone would return my call (no indication of when). My last attempt was to use the "pay for support" option at $19.99 per hour, despite being entitled to free support. I figured that they would certainly have someone on the line for people who were willing to pay. Wrong! No technician. No "please wait for the next available representative." Just another "leave your name and number..." And this was all during normal business hours!

If, despite what you have read, you still want to try this product, don't purchase the box with the CD, as I did. Download the software instead from Eisenworld's web site. You'll have fewer hassles if you decide later to return it--which, based on the experiences of users like me who have reviewed this product--is a strong possibility. Eisenworld does not allow a merchant to refund your purchase directly, no matter who sold the product to you. You'll instead need to get an RMA number from Eisenworld (which is a pain in itself, since they don't respond quickly to your request). Then you'll need to ship the box to Eisenworld in Florida, after which you'll wait several weeks for your check, minus, of course, any sales tax or shipping fees you paid. If, however, you purchased the software from Eisenworld and downloaded the program files from the web site, they will issue your refund directly to your credit card.

The only good thing I can say about this product is that the "undo" feature works. I was able to reverse the faulty transfer of my my files and restore everything to its original state. That's small consolation, as I wasted many hours in a futile attempt to get this product to work. In the end, I bought an external hard drive and used it to transfer my files. That process also took time, but everything was moved properly, and I now have a second hard drive both for back-up and extra storage. It's what I should have done in the first place.

UPDATE July 26, 2005: I would like to comment on John Meghly's review posted on June 27. I am glad that he had a positive experience with PC Relocator Ultra, but his review only serves to reinforce the dissatisfaction that many of us have had with this product. Mr. Meghly appears to understand all of the hidden complexities of a PC migration and was able to apply his understanding to make PC Relocator work successfully. That is great, but many of us aren't as expert. Eisenworld/AlohaBob markets PC Relocator as a product that is easy to use and will work for almost anyone. As many of the reviews posted here indicate, that clearly isn't the case. If, in reality, someone needs to have a more advanced level of knowledge to benefit from this product, then it is being mismarketed, or else the manufacturer needs to provide much more detailed instructions, better information about troubleshooting, and more active support to assist the average non-technical user.

Maybe this product would work for cloning identical systems, but for moving from an old computer to a new one? WORTHLESS. I wish I'd read the other reviews before I'd bought a copy at a local store.

I have no idea how the transfers would have performed -- I ran into so many restrictions that I never let it do anything.

1) My old W98SE machine had only one "user" on it... "default"; since W9x had no effective protection, I never bothered to create a "username" for it, but left it at the factory default. The new machine is a WXP (Pro) box, so of course I have accounts created.

The program complained that the WXP "root" (admin) account was not the same as the W9x "default" account. It wanted me to create an admin privileged account named "default" for "proper operation" (and, naturally, can't be run from a non-admin account).

2) The old box, partly to minimize the disk wastage on small files, had lots of partitions:
C: M$ OS and applications
D: 3rd party applications
E: swap file and TEMP directory (only 1GB)
F: games and downloaded files
G: text (wordprocessor, excel, database, programming source, etc.)
H: graphics (digital camera, scanner, 3d-renders; not downloaded)
I: MP3 files, and archived images
J: Intended for digital video captures
K: Intended for digital video to-be-burned
L: scratch stuff (archived downloaded installers)

C/E/F were on a 30GB drive
D/G/H were on a 40GB drive
I/J/K/L were on an external 160GB drive.

New machine had a 400GB drive split into:
C: OS and applications (50GB)
E: 275GB data (there's a few hidden DELL support partitions, and a 50GB space reserved for a Linux install).

Does PC Relocator let me specify where to put stuff? NO... It almost gloats about that. If a source partition does not have a matching writeable destination partition, it creates a C:/partition name. The only option the user has is to accept a partition transfer, or ignore it.

If you look at the above, this meant that ONLY the swapfile/temp data partition on the old machine would be move to the data partition of the new one (and that's the one partition I wouldn't be transferring). All the rest, close to 80GB worth, was going to be put into subdirectories of my 50GB C: (which already had 10GB of M$ software/OS installed). It was easier to just make all partitions on the old machine shareable, and then mount them on the new one, followed by dragging their contents to the desired destination...


3) In association with the above, the "relocated" applications would still be stuck in, in my case, a "C:/D" directory tree.

At the very least, this application should have allowed the user to EDIT the destination path for each source partition and, to live up to the box gloats, should let one specify a new destination for each application. It should then modify the related registry entries that it is copying. Heck, Partition Magic had a utility that could adjust the registry and INI files to allow for partition letter changes.

The doggo reviews are missing the point on this product. Suppose you try to stick your brain into a baby's body? Do you really believe everything will work perfectly without some RETRAINING? Or that you should "let Microsoft do it?"

What ya'll fail to understand is that this process is a very big deal. In the first place it is so far beyond the Microsoft's "settings transfer" utility that it is not comparable. It can save about five times as much effort I would say for the average computer user. Not everything -- but five times as much.

Maybe that makes sense for some and not for others but for people with a heavily customized system configuration it is a life saver -- a real brain transplant. I have literally hundreds of utilities and apps that I depend on daily without thinking about them. I have thousands of hours invested in my configuration. The idea that I could POSSIBLY reinstall it all from scratch went away three or four years ago.

Many of these features will transfer painlessly. Some are real pains in the backside by design or incompetence or conspiracy. Some like Norton's crap are so obsessive-compulsive that they shouldn't be on anybody's computer for any reason -- and have to be removed so they won't interfere with such an important event.

Basically there are so many variables that it is humanly (and therefore corporately) impossible for Eisenworld people to manage without competent support FROM THE USER to prepare BOTH MACHINES and then to manage the process capably and then to clean up and yes, to catch the errors.

The example of expecting a complex partition schedule to transfer without coordinating partitions manually is just classic goof stuff. A dream for some future day but not this decade if ever.

Think about it -- these reviews trash this product and company and dishearten the crew for THE ONLY PRODUCT THAT WILL DO THE JOB. How are you going to do a transfer like it in the future if they say hang it? Leave it up to Microsoft? Like Microsoft has managed system backup? Or system restore points? You have got to be kidding.

In fact there are problems with the concept. The first is the System Registry and the distribution of program threads across possibly dozens or (I have seen) hundreds of logical entries. If the ideal wasn't bad enough in practice the Registry is a disaster of old threads leading nowhere. You want this program to figure it out while it is on the move? If you had any appreciation for the scope of the work you would do everything you can to prepare before the transfer.

Ultimately there are errors -- the program copies too much or not enough. You have to compare data sizes carefully because whether it's your fault, the coding's fault, or just gremlins (WHICH EXIST -- THEY ARE REAL -- TRUST ME IT'S MY JOB) it can just skip something leaving you without hundreds of megabytes that you "assumed" transferred but didn't.

DO YOUR COMPETENT BACKUPS. MANAGE THE TRANSFER. Or hire somebody who will. That will cost you a minimum of several hundred bucks -- and no matter who you hire -- this is the product they will use.

And yes, do the backup to a hard drive. This points out one other feature of this five-star program (five for importance, not ease of use). IT IS THE ONLY METHOD OF BACKUP THAT CAN RESTORE TO A NON IDENTICAL SYSTEM.

"Oh you wanted your restoration to run? Well then you have to restore it to the same computer." "But my computer, my laptop, was stolen." "Well I can't help that -- backup programs only restore the hard drive -- not make an image run on a different computer. That's not how it works. You'll have to reinstall all your programs." "Oh! You mean there's no way to do that?" "Absolutely none -- unless you can find an identical computer."

A PC Relocator image to an external hard drive can restore to ANY new machine within standard upgrade guidelines. So it's flat worth it to try to get it right, and hope this company doesn't "let Microsoft do it."

I purchaced this program so I could clone my desktop PC hard drive to my new laptop. Both run windows xp with service pack 2. I transferred about 30 GB of data, and in about 40 minutes (using my hardwired home network connection) the laptop was up and running. All my programs - about 40 of them - work flawlessly on the laptop. The only problem I had was with my Roxio GoBack, and it turns out that program would not function on the laptop even when I tried to re-install it. I will be using this program for all my future PC migtations.

Well, it's two weeks later and I need to amend this review.
I still recommend the software, but with I did have a few problems with it that were not immediately noticable.
Be prepared to run the installation more than once. I found that some programs did not install properly on the new computer. Even when these programs were uninstalled and re-installed they did not work properly(Word 2002, Rhapsody,VideoStudio 6). The only way to get them to work was to erase the entire relocation process, delete these programs from the relocation menu, and install them from disc on the new computer. One of the programs (Microsoft Word 2002) had to be uninstalled from the old computer before relocation, otherwise no attempt to install the program on the new computer would work. Be very sure you relocate only the programs you really need, as some programs get "stuck" on the new computer and be removed easily.
Even with these bugs, it's still easier to use aloha bob than to sit in front of your computers for days doing a manual transfer from one hard drive to another. Just don't expect a perfect result the first time.

Not only did PCR UC fail to properly transfer applications from the old machine to the new one, the garbage it created in the process created many problems on the new machine. After all the time I spent on the phone with tech support at the various application vendors, it would have been quicker and cheaper to just manually reinstall the applications. For simple files and settings, the transfer wizard built into windows will do the trick. Don't wast your money or your time on this product.

I bought PC Relocator Ultra Control because it's what they use at my local CompUSA. I'm certainly no tech-head, but PC Relocator Ultra Control worked pretty much fine for me, with the caveat that I needed to use some intuition to solve some glitches. Let me share some of the details of my experience, which hopefully will help you if you come across the same problems; or you can just scroll down to my bottom line.

When you first run PC Relocator Ultra Control, it asks if you want to let it automatically close all running programs and processes. Each of my computers crashed when I said yes. I think it closes some necessary system processes that should not be closed. So the next time I simply said no and I experienced no problems. Make sure you manually close as much as you can (right click on the icons on the lower right hand corner of your desktop taskbar and select close or exit).

Do make sure you follow the directions for your screensaver and power settings and to scan and prepare your hard drives before relocation. In fact, IT CAN NEVER HURT TO READ THOROUGHLY ALL THE INSTRUCTIONS, both in the box and the user manual document included in the installed program, and to watch all the short tutorial videos.

I had a problem similar to another reviewer's when migrating from a PC running Windows 98SE to a PC running XP. PC Relocator warned me that my user names were not the same. I don't use any password settings to sign in to my computer, so I have no custom user names. PC Relocator informed me that my 98SE default user was "Unknown User" and my XP user was named "Owner." All I did was log out of "Unknown User" on my 98SE PC and log in as "Owner." I just typed "Owner" on the log in screen and didn't need to do anything special to create the user.

I used STANDARD selectivity, not automatic or expert. I can't speak to the ease of use of the latter two, but standard worked fine for me. It was extremely easy to scroll through the list of files and programs and select what I wanted to migrate. PC Relocator had almost no problems migrating the programs that it rated as "high" and "medium" probability of success. Naturally, there are always going to be some things it can't migrate.

The transfer was very fast with the enclosed USB 2.0 cable. About 1.2GB migrated in about 45 minutes. There were some minor glitches, including having to reinstall one of my critical programs for which I still had the installation disk (that's my biggest piece of advice...ALWAYS KEEP YOUR INSTALLATION DISKS where you'll be able to find them later!). I also had to uninstall some older or trial versions of my programs on my new PC before the relocation or else PC Relocator wouldn't migrate them.

THE BOTTOM LINE: A GREAT VALUE FOR THE MONEY COMPARED WITH USING A PROFESSIONAL, WORTH THE EXTRA COST COMPARED WITH COMPETING PRODUCTS. BUT IF YOU KNOW ABSOLUTELY NOTHING ABOUT COMPUTER SOFTWARE AND AREN'T A FAIRLY INTUITIVE TINKER, SPEND YOUR TIME AND MONEY HAVING A PROFESSIONAL DO YOUR RELOCATION.

I recently bought and downloaded your PC Relocator basic. I first tried uaing a parallel cable and got an estimated transfer time of 119+ hours. After trying to find a USB data transfer cable locally, I gave up and upgraded to your Ultra Control version.

After setting up my new computer on my LAN, I started PC Relocator. 2 hours and 46 minutes later I had transferred 30 GB of comprising some 43,000 files to my new computer. The only program that did not work on the new computer was Adobe Photoshop CS (Photoshop 7.0 transferred and works fine).

I am writing to tell you how happy I am with your product. It saved me untold hours of frustration and grief. Its so nice to find a product that works as advertised. (Although your PC Relocator Basic is frustrating and not well described on your web-site)

Congratulations