LAPLINK Ultimate 10 With High Speed Cable

Product was shipped and delivered fast. Instructions are well summarized on a handy card. However, the whole operation is painfully slow, even with the special Laplink cable. The included software is to be installed on both computers; the version I received first needed a substantial update before doing anything. Transfer between two laptops on Windows 10 averages about 6Gb/hour; it is also very important to prevent any screen-saver and sleep-mode to kick in. No fun in having to start over. Fortunately, the last migration can be undone in case of problems. On-screen Instructions could be clearer.

I gave PC Mover Ultimate a try with surprisingly good results, actually. It offers 2 options: (1) Connect the 2 PCs with the special ethernet cable provided, or (2) Use a system image of the source PC. Both options give full control over what will be transferred, according to the documentation. I only wanted my programs and settings transferred, not OS files. (Both machines are running the same version of Win10 Home x64. The source PC was a laptop I bought a few months back and spent weeks getting set up with my programs. The destination PC was a new desktop I just bought and wanted it set up identical to the laptop, but did not want to go through the hassle of once again installing and configuring everything so soon after doing all that with the laptop.)

I decided to go with option #2 (use a system image of the source PC) because it seemed the most straightforward and I happened to have a fairly recent system image (less than a week old). I mounted the image on the destination PC and started the software. It only needed to be installed on the destination PC since it was going to be using the system image as the source, not another machine.

It walked me through the few steps needed to get it set up and after scanning the system image it revealed the list of programs it detected, color coding them thusly: green for programs that will likely transfer successfully; yellow means the program will likely transfer but may require some attention afterwards on the new machine (i.e. serial numbers, and some dependent files, etc) and red meant it was not likely to be successful (MS Office, for instance). There were only a couple marked in red. After I went carefully through the lists of what can be transferred and making my choices, it gave me an ETA of 12 hours. However, it was finished less than 2 hours later (you can set it to send you a text or an email once it’s completed).

After nervously rebooting I was happy to see the familiar desktop wallpaper and icons from the source PC come up on the new PC. So far so good. I checked a few important folders and quickly tried a few of the more important programs to see if they worked properly. There were a few adjustments I had to make here and there and some serial numbers needed to be re-entered, and a few had to be repair-installed. No big deal, really, since I would’ve had to install them anyway on the new machine. But overall the new PC was a fairly satisfactory clone of the source PC. It was a relatively painless procedure, with negligible glitches. It saved me days of installing and configuring to get my new PC up to spec with my old one.

As I’ve been using the new machine, there’s the odd issue that would come up that would need to be addressed. For instance, one program kept saying there were registry errors and would not open, but never specified what the errors were. It turned out the program was looking for audio drivers that it had been using on the old machine but didn’t exist on the new one because of different hardware. It was solved by merely pointing the program to the audio drivers on the new machine with a quick registry edit. (A little technical knowledge is helpful to work out some of the glitches should they come up.)

All things considered, I would say the experience was 99% successful in accomplishing what I wanted it to do. But it does give you the option of undoing everything should something go wrong or you change your mind for whatever reason.

No regrets here and wouldn’t hesitate to use this system again in the future.

First, this product is NOT, as advertised, “easy to use.” It took over 26 hours, 12 or 13 of which had me actively engaged in setting it up or troubleshooting problems. However, when I was finished, all my files and almost all my programs were installed on the new computer.

First, the set-up took over 3 hours. Don’t neglect this part. Follow all of the instructions carefully: check for duplicate files, find and remove all ant-virus tools and firewalls, and use the ethernet cable to connect the computers (recommended).

Next, be prepared to deal with glitches. Here were some of mine. I could not manage to connect the ethernet cable to the second computer. The cable wouldn’t fit into the port. So I set up the transfer by wifi and left to visit my father. The transfer LOOKED as though it were occurring because an icon showed pieces of paper going between two computers. DON’T BE FOOLED BY THIS PICTURE. Nothing is happening unless you see the time counting down and a green band moving slowly beneath it. When I got back, the transfer had been stopped by a runtime error that mentioned HP imaging. The Indian tech answering the phone said the problem was beyond his expertise and I should go to live chat. Ms. Volker in Seattle, after conferring with some experts, advised me on live chat that the printer seemed to be blocking the transfer. I unplugged the printer and tried again several times. The transfer kept stopping because the connection between computers was dropped (not laplink’s fault–we have been having trouble with our router). At last my husband asked me why I wasn’t using the cable. I told him; he went to the computers and plugged the cable into the new one. It seems that there were 2 safety buttons protecting the port–rather like the safety caps that keep you from getting to your pills. Here the laplink picture showing an easy plug-in was NOT useful. After the cable was plugged in, then for the first time I saw the countdown numbers and the green band.

The transfer continued overnight. The next morning I was pleased to see how much had transferred–everything, by and large, except for Office and Malwarebytes. I was especially delighted, today, to see that I had Firefox, with all my bookmarks and automatic signns intact. I did, however, have to install the printer (disconnected to support the transfer), and my old windows 7 disk wouldn’t work. It took me several tries to download the drivers for a Windows 10–also the better part of an hour to figure out how to make Dropbox work (reinstall).

In short, this was no picnic, but I have programs like Adobe Pro without having to pay for them again and programs like Audacity without having to find and recreate them. If you have perseverance, brain power, and a modicum of technical and physical skill, you can make this product work. But I feel sure that each transfer will present its own set of unique problems. Ms. Volker said she had never encountered a printer blocking the software before.