Hi,

In message znr1069509822k@trad, Mike Rivers
writes

The downside is that it wants to backup *all* your files

How does it do that? Does it keep asking you to feed it CDs? That
sounds like an all day project.

You can put the backup on any local or network drive. I usually save it
to a network drive, but I have also used removable drives (USB or 1394)
and in a pinch, I just saved it to the local system drive, then
temporarily put that drive in the new system to copy the stuff back off.

I don't know all the pitfalls, but I think what I'd be inclined to do
is to temporarily install the drive intended for the new computer in
the old computer, and use the utility that comes with just about ever
new disk drive to copy everything from the old drive to the new one
(including the OS and all the settings).

Yep, that works too, and it gives some peace of mind. I only ever get
OEM drives though, so I don't see those utilities. I guess there is a
potential pitfall in that putting the old OS onto the new machine can
cause problems, especially if you use it to boot from. It could have
different chipset inf files, drivers etc. that might cause it to fail to
boot.

Then, I'd put that clone in
the new computer, boot it up, and do an OS upgrade (if that's what I
wanted). This is what I did when I upgraded a computer (but didn't
change any hardware other than the disk drive) from Win95 to Win98 and
it worked fine.

95 to 98 isn't such a big deal, as they are both kind of DOS based.
Win2k and XP can be more problematic, especially since MS seem to change
to version of NTFS at every opportunity. Booting a new machine to be
faced with a blue screen announcing a 'kernel error' followed by a bunch
of codes that the Microsoft knowledge base claims to know nothing about
can be seriously frustrating. I've been there too many times.

It was comforting to know that in case something
didn't work and I needed to use the "old" computer, I could stick the
original drive in it and be back to where I started.

Agreed; there is no such thing as too many backups, but you knew that.

--
Regards,
Glenn Booth