Customer Reviews

Laplink PC mover Windows 7 Upgrade Assistant

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(22)

 

 

Laplink is a company whose products go a long way back and have a history of quality and reliability. Laplinks' PC Mover is no different: it really does migrate anything and everything from one machine to another without requiring you to reinstall all your software. It is not as easy as the website and its customer testimonials promise, but if you go slowly and pay close attention to what it is doing, you will be pleasantly surprised at not having to re-unlock Microsoft Office, dig out installation CDs and DVDs, or re-register cherished DRM-infected games. PC Mover even uses the simple metaphors of "Moving Vans" and "Loading and Unloading the Moving Van" to make things easy to understand.

This listing is the boxed product of PC Mover Windows 7 Upgrade Assistant: the digital download version is the same product, but nothing is shipped to you. Instead you pull it down on your computer. You may view the Digital Download version here: Laplink PC Mover Windows 7 Upgrade Assistant [DOWNLOAD]

This "Windows 7 Upgrade Assistant" flavor of PC Mover is a pretty sweet deal: a lower price gets you a one-time migration to Windows 7. This can be used for upgrading one machine and putting everything back on afterwards. For every additional machine you wish to use this version of PC Mover, you will need to purchase an additional license.

My only complaint with the software is when it tries to step out of the path of what you are doing, and pull you along with it. For example, after you agree to the license and read the disclaimer and warning, you are given a link to the documentation in PDF form. This is a good diversion: it allows you one last chance to print out and/or read the manual (and I strongly advise you to do so).
The next step, however, tells you it will make [...] your default search provider and change your browser's home page to [...] (which, ha ha, you didn't ASK for, did you?). Say no, and the next step tugs at you again: this time it's showing you a license agreement. If you're not paying attention--hey, wait! Didn't I already agree to the license? Yes, you did....this is the license agreement to install the [...] toolbar and embed it in your browser. At first glance it might seem like saying no would cancel your installation of PC Mover, but it won't...say no and move on.

Just as you think you're at the end, you'll get snagged one more time: this time Laplink wants you to go look at some of its other software. It looks like a setup screen, it's in the setup wizard...but it's really just another ad. I'm a little busy trying to migrate everything that matters to me--can't you do this after we upgrade? I'm not going to install a bunch of Laplink products now, not use them, back them up, and then restore it all after the upgrade--leave me alone!

The only other point--and this is a very important one--is a bit confusing. The last step as you back things up will tell you that the program has identified X number of GigaBytes of content, and thanks to compression, the actual size of this content will probably be about half. This is their way of reminding you that on whatever drive you're going to put the content, you're going to need to have that much free space available or else you'll have a problem. PC Mover will then finish in seconds. Another confusing point: the "Moving Van" file PC Mover creates at this point is tiny--just a few MegaBytes, not the GigaBytes it just told you about. The GigaBytes referred to earlier are elsewhere; this is just a "roadmap" so the "Moving Van" doesn't get lost.

Probably the nicest thing about this program is that once you're ready to "Unload the Moving Van" it's as simple as installing the software on the new machine, pointing it at the "Moving Van" file, and waiting while it "Unloads." Reboot and you'll be amazed - it really was all there for me, unlocked, re-registered, and working like a charm.

If you want to move one machine to Windows 7, this is a good tool, but you need to be a step above "Beginner"...and you need to watch the program closely as it does its work. I guess everybody needs to make a buck, but I wish Laplink hadn't gone out of their way to mislead you into re-sponsoring it: it'd be a 5-star product if the Moving Van weren't driven by a shoddy used-car salesman hawking his wares at you along the way.

We followed directions explicitly in upgrading our Vista computer to Win 7. PC Mover was not only a complete failure (nothing migrated to the new OS), but it has locked us out of installing or uninstalling any program. Unfortunately, due to rave reviews on various computer magazine sites, we foolishly did not back up some files to hard copies, but depended upon the utility provided by PC Mover. We got an error message and contacted PC Mover technical support via live chat and were told that "we must have done something wrong". That was it...great tech support. Contacting PC Mover by phone yielded less help. When asked if we were moving from one pc to another or if we were upgrading a single machine, the support person groaned when we confirmed the latter situation, and suggested that we should get a refund.
So...no tech support, and no working computer...this software deserves a minus rating if it were available.

I have NEVER deleted a review in Amazon before this product. I completely trashed my previous review praising the PC Mover Upgrade Assistant after I realized that my system was broken in a very aggravating way.

After the problems were discovered and LapLink support was worse than useless, I rolled back my Moving Van unpacking and installed all my apps by hand under Win7.

The Good:
It did in fact migrate all my third party applications and games from the old PC (your machine before the OS reinstall) to the new PC (your machine after the Win7 Upgrade). Some programs did require that the activation key be re-entered. This was expected and not problematic. I bypassed some glitchy Win7 issues with older games on DirectX 11 when I had completed the migration. I would recommend printing out the Upgrade assistant PDF file and following the steps.

For this kind of in-place upgrade, the moving van is smaller than the PC Assistant thinks it is. A program error I'm sure, but it's not really packing up your software for this kind of in-place migration. It's packing up registry settings so it can point the new OS to the programs where they are already located on your hard drive. This made for an uncomfortable moment when I began the moving van unpack and LapLink informed me that I was restoring a 240GB van file to a drive with only 230GB free. This was not correct - the van was not truly that size, and the unpack completed with no more space taken up than was used by the new OS files.

The Bad:
If something goes wrong in the move, your best recourse is to un-do the Moving Van unpack, which essentially brings you back to the point after you have installed Windows 7, but before you imported all your stuff into Windows 7 again. I guess that wasn't too bad - I never intended to go back to Vista anyway. Also, if something goes wrong during the packing, there is no means of reviewing what's in the moving van (and it took quite a while to pull the van together). You would have to completely roll back the OS upgrade and start over from scratch.

The Ugly:
The system seemed to be just fine until a relative visiting four days after my upgrade wanted to play Windows Solitaire, a game I rarely look at. It wasn't there, when normally, it's installed during the OS install by default. The problem occurred in Windows Features. I know - how many average users add or remove Windows Features (under Programs)? I do - perhaps not all the time, but if I wish to add or remove an operating system feature, like accessories, or remote desktop, or voice commands, or solitaire for pete's sake, I'd like to be able to. After the Laplink moving van was unpacked, I wasn't able to add or remove any Windows OS Features.

Which meant some portion of Vista that had it's settings migrated broke the ability to change the configuration of the apps that come bundled with Win7. I contacted LapLink support and was told that some applications wouldn't work - contact the manufacturer. Well, it was part of the OS, and I told them so, and the "tech" insisted that Solitaire and Minesweeper were not from Microsoft, and that I should contact the manufacturer of those products and download versions of the product that were compatible with Windows 7...

Usually, even the worst, lowest level tech is aware that solitaire is on every Windows operating system. This guy wasn't that advanced.

After going around for a while, I ended the support chat and rolled back the moving van unpack job. This took about 6 hours, and I let it run overnight. The next day, it was back to plain Windows7, no programs migrated, but I was able to add and remove Windows features (including the little games bundled with the OS) with no problem. I proceeded to reinstall all my programs one at a time - Which is precisely what this product claims to help you avoid!

I had figured, hey, for $10 it was a good experiment and it might be really good. Instead, it was a waste of my time.

I will say that unless someone had asked me to get solitaire working on my system, I might not have noticed the problem for months, and by then might not have associated it with the PC Mover Upgrade Assistant, making it harder to troubleshoot.

This product has cured me, for a little while anyway, of wanting to take an installation shortcut.

I found Laplink's PCMover Upgrade Assistant to be extremely helpful and certainly well worth the price. I was able to upgrade an older laptop (Gateway M320) from Windows XP Prof. to Windows 7 Home Premium with relative ease. That's not to say that everything was perfect but initially I thought I was going to have to upgrade to Vista and then to Windows 7 to do an "in place" upgrade (I even bought the Vista upgrade). The Upgrade Assistant let me go directly from XP to Win 7 with little difficulty.
The steps I took were:
1. Backup your hard drive (I would do a full backup of everything if possible but at bare minimum backup you data).
2. Run the Windows 7 upgrade assessment utility.
3. Take care of any issues that the assessment utility flags as critical and review the rest for potential resolution.
4. Buy PCMover Upgrade Assistant.
5. Run the Upgrade Assistant following their instructions to the letter (if you've downloaded the software make sure you go get the PDF instructions).
6. Run Windows 7 upgrade.
7. Take care of any issues that need immediate attention.
8. Install Upgrade Assistant under Windows 7 and complete the process.

From this point you will have go through and check your applications and (as I did) have to re-install those that don't quite work right. I also had a problem with the video driver because there isn't one for this chip set that's compatible with Windows 7 (and Intel doesn't seem interested in creating one). I did find a work around so that's solved. Any problems that I've had or will have can't be attributed to PCMover. PCMover has save me a lot of time and effort and worked as advertised. I would strongly recommend it for people that want to upgrade from XP to Windows 7. ...and from what I can tell will go from any version of XP to any version of Widows 7 (something else that MS doesn't want you to do). :(

On a side note I can't believe that MS is so arrogant that they wouldn't supply and easier path to upgrade from XP to Windows 7. No wonder they're loosing market share. It's obvious with this program that it can be done.

I used the digital version, but my experience will also apply here. I printed and read both the long and short version of the instructions and followed them precisely. Nothing usable was transferred, just a bunch of non-usable garbage that I now have to clean up. I am now going through the multi-day process of transferring everything manually. What a waste of money and time.

Laplink is a company whose products go a long way back and have a history of quality and reliability. Laplink's PC Mover is no different: it really does migrate anything and everything from one machine to another without requiring you to reinstall all your software. It is not as easy as the website and its customer testimonials promise, but if you go slowly and pay close attention to what it is doing, you will be pleasantly surprised at not having to re-unlock Microsoft Office, dig out installation CDs and DVDs, or re-register cherished DRM-infected games. PC Mover even uses the simple metaphors of "Moving Vans" and "Loading and Unloading the Moving Van" to make things easy to understand.

This Amazon listing is for the digital download of the PC Mover Windows 7 Upgrade Assistant: you can pull it directly down to your computer. There is also a boxed product edition of the same program and it is available here: Laplink PC mover Windows 7 Upgrade Assistant

Either way, the Windows 7 Upgrade Assistant version of PC Mover is a pretty sweet deal: a lower price gets you a one-time migration to Windows 7. This can be used for upgrading one machine and putting everything back on afterwards. For every additional machine you wish to use this version of PC Mover, you will need to purchase an additional license.

My only complaint with the software is when it tries to step out of the path of what you are doing, and pull you along with it. For example, after you agree to the license and read the disclaimer and warning, you are given a link to the documentation in PDF form. This is a good diversion: it allows you one last chance to print out and/or read the manual (and I strongly advise you to do so).
The next step, however, tells you it will make "Ask" your default search provider and change your browser's home page to "Ask dot com" (which, ha ha, you didn't ASK for, did you?). Say no, and the next step tugs at you again: this time it's showing you a license agreement. If you're not paying attention--hey, wait! Didn't I already agree to the license? Yes, you did....this is the license agreement to install the "Ask" dot com toolbar and embed it in your browser. At first glance it might seem like saying no would cancel your installation of PC Mover, but it won't...say no and move on.

Just as you think you're at the end, you'll get snagged one more time: this time Laplink wants you to go look at some of its other software. It looks like a setup screen, it's in the setup wizard...but it's really just another ad. I'm a little busy trying to migrate everything that matters to me--can't you do this after we upgrade? I'm not going to install a bunch of Laplink products now, not use them, back them up, and then restore it all after the upgrade--leave me alone!

The only other point--and this is a very important one--is a bit confusing. The last step as you back things up will tell you that the program has identified X number of GigaBytes of content, and thanks to compression, the actual size of this content will probably be about half. This is their way of reminding you that on whatever drive you're going to put the content, you're going to need to have that much free space available or else you'll have a problem. PC Mover will then finish in seconds. Another confusing point: the "Moving Van" file PC Mover creates at this point is tiny--just a few MegaBytes, not the GigaBytes it just told you about. The GigaBytes referred to earlier are elsewhere; this is just a "roadmap" so the "Moving Van" doesn't get lost.

Probably the nicest thing about this program is that once you're ready to "Unload the Moving Van" it's as simple as installing the software on the new machine, pointing it at the "Moving Van" file, and waiting while it "Unloads." Reboot and you'll be amazed - it really was all there for me, unlocked, re-registered, and working like a charm.

If you want to move one machine to Windows 7, this is a good tool, but you need to be a step above "Beginner"...and you need to watch the program closely as it does its work. I guess everybody needs to make a buck, but I wish Laplink hadn't gone out of their way to mislead you into re-sponsoring it: it'd be a 5-star product if the Moving Van weren't driven by a shoddy used-car salesman hawking his wares at you along the way.

This program caused more problems than it solved. Two weeks later & I'm still trying to undo incompatability issues in windows 7 that the program brought over from XP. Some of the problem may have come from trying to upgrade XP 32 to Win 7 64, none the less it would have been easier to do a clean install and reload all the programs.

I purchased Laplink PC mover Windows 7 Upgrade Assistant to upgrade Windows XP to Windows 7 Home Premium. After following all directions specifically, my computer, 3 Mhz Intel dual processor with 4Gb memory, would not boot at all! Upon calling laplink I was told that they could only help via chat. Getting on another computer and chatting with "technical support" I was told that 1) it was Windows 7 problem, 2) it was my backup software problem (it was suggested that I buy Laplink's product!) 3) my computer was too old (not true!). It seems that it was everyone's fault except Laplink. Problem is that laplink is the software that was "in control" of the process and I followed each step exactly as written in their manual.

After getting another boot disk, I restored my saved image, then followed Microsoft's instructions for upgrade of an XP system and while complicated and lengthy, it worked perfectly.

Bottom line, do not waste your $9.99 on this product! Your time is worth a lot more. You will NOT get any help from their "technical support". Makes me wonder about other Laplink products, too!

It didn't work well with Windows 7. In fact, it messed up the registry. The good news, is Win7 fixed the registry for me.

I downloaded this program on Amazon. I used it to upgrade from Vista to Win7. Program worked great. HOWEVER, anyone using this program should download the PDF file that describes in detail the exact steps to take to move your files and then to reinstall them as well as steps to follow when upgrading Win7. I was able to be up and running with MOST programs. I had to reinstall Acronis True Image Home and three other programs that are specifically designed for my profession as a psychologist. I had to reinstall all 3 but all the database files were where they were supposed to be and I was up and running in no time.

If you follow the directions closely, you should have no problems with PC mover Window 7 Upgrade Assistant and you can be rid of Vista for good!