Migrate from XP to Vista

Hi guys,
I recently bought an ultra portable laptop that comes with Windows Vista, which I decided to give it a try (been using XP for so long). I plan to merge 2 partitions (recovery and OS) of this laptop and do a clean / fresh Vista installation without the bloatware from the PC vendor, I guess this is what NBR members usually do. Problem is, I have stuck with my current XP laptop for a while and have optimized & acquainted to its applications and settings. I wonder if there is any chance to migrate at least: Firefox + add-on + personal data, outlook and my email, itunes (songs, apps for my iphone, my contacts) from the old laptop to the new laptop. I just can't imaging how can I do a fresh installation on the new laptop and setup all of the customizations have been done for couple years on these applications.
Thanks a bunch for your help guys.

 

You can save your windows user account. (C://Users/XXX) but I don't know enough about FF and itunes to know if they are saved there.

 

you should be able to just copy over the firefox profile with ease. it's in c:\documents and settings\username\application data and has to go to c:\users\username\appdata

the mozilla folder, that is.

outlook could be similar but i'm not sure.

i like os-switches to do reinstallations. then i can see what i really need now, instead of what i tought i'm gonna need and collected over the years.

 

you will regret it buddy! stick with XP trust me!

 

Thanks for all your advices, I will definitely consider the XP option. Anyway, I feel very comfortable with this OS.

 

get over it, that's so old.

 

Vista on most machines is the better option to XP.

You can export bookmarks in FF and import them...

Oulook e-mails - you could copy the data file over, either locate it, or use the free backup tool to save a copy.
Outlook 2007 opens older data files too.

 

Good idea. Give it a try, before deciding.

I dont usually do what NBR members usually do

How about just disabling un-needed startup processes and services first? Then use it for a while before wiping everything out? Or make a full backup/recovery just in case.

Customising your new Vista is a good way to learn the OS and the new comp. You might be surprised as how things go.

Good lucks.

cheers ...

 

I suggest the fresh install of Vista as we tried to tweak down an existing Vista installation and it still had some sort of stutter all 1-2 hour. Just a second but it was annoying. A fresh install with no tweaks solved the problem.

So i can suggest what NBR members usually do: a fresh install.

 

About Xp or Vista, I think this laptop 's capable to deliver acceptable performance on either OS.
About the tweaking or fresh vista installation, I would rather go with the fresh installation, even with XP for couple reasons:
- Utilize all available storage, I do backup regularly but on external storage media, I guess it's more reliable and safer
- Cleaning all bloatware + tweaking might not work sometime juts makes me feel I have a OS with scars.
The only thing that concerns me is how can I migrate as much as possible all of my old stuff to the new environment. At least these things will make the new OS as productive to me as the old one. Thanks again guys for your sharing.

 

For outlook 2007, you can export your mail, rules, arhieves, contacts, calendar...etc to a single .pst file. All you need to do when you migrate to a new computer is to import the .pst file and you're done.

 

I decided to try vista. Turn out it's not that hard to migrate those apps to new OS. After apply the tweaks that I found here, the OS works in a very similar manner to XP, not too bad after all. Thanks all.

 

Vista is a pretty good OS. It has a bad reputation because people are used to XP after 6 years of use and don't want to move on. It happends on almost all the windows versions. E.G. windows 2000 to xp transition period

 

It's a bit more complicated than that. Vista, even in SP1, still has backward compatibility issues both with drivers and apps. By contrast, I have yet to see an app or device that is Vista only. Tons of freebie little apps no longer work on Vista for various reasons. It takes up more HDD space and performs worse in games (OK now by only a single digit %, but some people here pay '000$ to get a graphics card which gives that sort of performance improvement). Then there's DRM. On the other hand, the main reason to go with Vista is ... it looks pretty . Let each person make up their own minds; but please don't call people 'oldtimers' just because they don't obediently lap up everything that comes out of Redmond.

 

drm is nonsence.

the rest is about apps that don't follow rules they should have followed in xp. driver incompatibility is a myth based on the fact that the lone affected ones are the loudest in the web by far. there are drivers that aren't working anymore, true. but it's a very small amount of hw that you can't use anymore with vista. and it's not microsofts fault.

it doesn't perform worse in games anymore, instead it can outperform xp sometimes (and with dx10, by far).

main feature to switch to vista: much more stable by default (f.e. for gaming. gpu drivers have a much smaller part that can actually cause bluescreens). more snappy gui (much less why isn't it responding situations), more support for modern hw (can actually use the <=4gb ram in 32bit, can actually use your 4 core quadcore, etc).

it's prettyness is a bonus, but mainly just that. it's by far the least important feature for the switch for me.

 

Vista got a bad reputation because it had significant problems on outdated hardware pre SP1. It works OK without SP1 with glitches on good harware, but at the time of the release the hardware basically wasn't up for the task.

So has XP - a game Anno 1603 - it worked on Windows ME and didn't on XP - backwards compatebility is always a problem, and compatebility mode on Vista is better than XP. In fact, some applications need compatebiliy settings "Windows 2000" to work instead of "XP" even though they worked on XP...

 

That's exactly what people have said when xp came out. They said it's not compatible, uses too much system resources and isn't compatible with games and little apps.

DRM doesn't really matter. For the peple who are legit who's music is already DRMed in the first place. They chose to get DRMed music and Vista will support that. If you bought non-DRM music, it'll stay non-DRMed. There's nothing wrong for Vista to implement the support of DRM.

If you compare XP and Vista on current hardware...e.g. quadcore processor + 4gig of ram + 500gig of hdd... Vista should perform quickier than XP, at least on my computer

 

Congratulations - you've proved nothing is perfect. What I'm saying is Vista is worse than XP, not that XP has no problems. No links - people not working for Microsoft will google ample evidence for that in about 3 seconds.

Both systems are equally stable - if anything I've heard of more blue ribbons on the interweb more than blue screens, again no point either of us collecting statistics - google blog search will do.

DRM matters as a point of principle. Video degradation, 'do not record flags' from broadcasters are all cases of my OS doing someone else's bidding. If you like an obedience collar, fine. I don't - I want my OS to serve me, not Hollywood. That's not the same as saying I'm inconvenienced by DRM. But I'm not buying into something that has this, any more than I would buy a car with an electronic speed limiter, even though I generally drive within the legal limits.

 

its a new technology, will hope to get bigger soon. its a good post.

 

hehe. yeah, and the internet is always right. haha.

vista has less possibilities to actually have a bluescreen f.e. in the graphics driver (massive less, most of the driver is userspace now).
with uac, most bugs can not affect the system itself, etc. the system is, by definition, much more stable and secure. doesn't mean it doesn't go havok if you have a bug in it's heart (kernel mode). but the chances are much lower.

well, i want my os to actually be able to allow movies to watch in a legal way. i do understand drm, and i don't like a lot of drm. giving the system a valid path to play secured movies is not about the drm. blueray has drm, vista hasn't. it has playback ability. else, you would not be able to watch blueray on any pc and would everyone would have to buy a ps3.
the os does serve me: it allows me to do stuff i want. stuff that's legal. and if i want, stuff that's illegal. but not by default, but by handling it myself.

again, where's the problem?

 

Sure, davepermen, the entire population of the world online is plain wrong, hehe. You alone have the monopoly on the facts.

As I said before, I am not inconvenienced by DRM ATM, but there are actually two problems. One is MS playing policeman - it should stick to writing software and leave law enforcement to the laywers. That's just a point of principle. Eg DRM should be an option on install. The second is that DRM is totally ineffective in the form it currently takes. I have a genuine BR disc, a new player, a licensed OS, but I still can't watch the movie because MS (and the rest of the 'Trusted Computing' bunch) decided that I need to buy a new monitor first. Meanwhile the pirates down the road from where I live have torrented the same movie and (surprise!!!) mininova is not telling them to go buy anything even though their monitor is older than mine. They just watch the movie in 1080p (unlike me).

I do not want my operating system to accept a 'do not record' instruction from a third party. This is in the same way I do not want my printer to refuse to print a page, because there may be a copyright there. Not because I rip movies or print copyrighted works, but because I believe it is not MS's business. As I said before, it is something called a 'p-r-i-n-c-i-p-l-e'.

DRM at the moment is not draconian, but if we the users timidly accept it, worse will follow. Today it is the movie industry. What industry will your OS stand up for tomorrow (in contravention of your commands or by degrading some of its functionality as 'punishment')? Will I be blocked from viewing bicycle pages on the internet to save the US auto industry?

Let's not forget - the playback 'ability' you tout, is not something which can only arise 'thanks to' DRM. You can technically (shock!!) have it without DRM, like it has been since the VCR came out. Why do you just assume that it is now an irreversible fact of life that we can't watch HD without a DRM shackle? Have you really been brainwashed by the MS PR machine that much? How about the 'I put the BR into the player and it just plays' functionality? Is that something you don't like? Too simple? Too user-centric? Or maybe you feel the pain of the Holywood execs?

 

well, you know about the internet? how someone doesn't like a thing and writes about it and it gets spread everywhere and all follow like sheep?

vista DID have a bad start. but it evolved since then, and you can read a lot of good reports about sp1 and soon about sp2. most of it's problems got solved, most of it's problems where never microsofts fault, and this IS documented. still, people are all about crying and wining, they did so with xp, they did so with vista, and soon they will with win7 after the first hype is over.

sheep behaviour, very interesting, very annoying.

okay, so you would prefer to have no, a.k.a. 0 blueray support then? is that your solution? thanks, i prefer to have a legal path in my system allowing blueray playback. and if you want to go illegal (depending on country), get anydvd hd and watch with it.

i prefer to not have drm, yes. but i see no problem with microsoft implementing it. it's better than apple who does it's own and doesn't support blueray at all.

they all try to fight pirates and do it in a stupid way. microsoft just looks at what users may want (blueray playback) and implement it in a way that they get the licence and no lawyers kicking their asses.

microsoft itself doesn't care about the drm. so don't them. else you would have to cry at each blueray player out there. and you can do so, for your principle. doesn't change the fact that the movie industry won't change their mind. so don't watch movies and don't care about it anymore.

oh, and i can watch hd perfectly fine without drm. if it doesn't come with it. and if it does, i can watch it with drm on any old monitor thanks to vga. it's just the full digital pathway that's blocked.

i'm against drm in principle. but producing stuff myself and knowing anyone can use and abuse it for free, me not making money, i know how that feels. i'm doing a 40h/week support job with callboy crap and such instead of what i like to do, as i'm incapable of making enough money out of it. i don't like people stealing it. so i don't care about your principle.

if drm limits how often i can use stuff, then it sucks. if drm is about making a path secure from using stuff for other things, then i don't agree with it, but i don't care.

about your screen. is it really the screen or the gpu? does it have hdmi? if not, does it have vga? at least one of those allows you to watch your stuff in hd.