change!

[thoreau]

Corporate Entercom announced this morning that we will be moving to Office 2007 and Outlook 2007 in February. In their email was a "video introduction" to both products - OMG - they've totally blown up the office suite and redesigned it. but will it make me more productive? that remains to be seen.

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I also - need a new laptop. My current model is slow and I've had to upgrade her multiple times. I have nearly 4K in windows software (most adobe suite plus adobe video editing) and while I'd like to go Macintosh at home - I think I will be looking for a great new Windows laptop. So here's the question - most if not all new laptops come loaded with Windows Vista. I would be taking my old laptop to say - Best Buy - and asking them to move the current harddrive on there - to my new laptop so I don't lose all my software packages. Any advice on this? can they transfer my software to the new PC? (thing is - I have no idea where a couple of the source disks are - so the copies (while legal) are not replaceable) I know I'm a bad computer owner - but with four moves in three years? some things didn't make it.

Comments

[brunorepublic.livejournal.com]

but will it make me more productive?

Not if they make you run them on Windows Vista!

[low-fat-muffin.livejournal.com]

I think here at he office - we'll stay on XP. and I might have to just save my clams and go Macintosh at home - even it means buying an entire new copy of the CS3 Suite for Mac

[truthfeather.livejournal.com]

the interfaces for Office actually are more intuitive, much to my surprise. I like the changes to Outlook, it interfaces with the Franklin Planner add-in more smoothly. (Yes I am one of THOSE People."

*borg voice* Resistance is futile.

[pagerbear.livejournal.com]

You can still get PC laptops with XP. Maybe not at big box retailers, but you can order them that way.

[notdefined.livejournal.com]

DO NOT GO TO BEST BUY.....EVER!!! Most anywhere would be preferable. Getting your data from one machine to another, even under windows, it not so big of a deal with a firewire cable. However, I would not give up on Mac. Windows runs just fine under bootcamp or preferably, Parallels. With the latter, you can have both Windows & OSX up at the same time so you can ease your migration angst. If you are still have your teaching credentials, you should be able to get an educational discount, which is fairly significant, or use your benefits as a veteran. Go to http://www.veteransadvantage.com, get the card and then use it through their link to the Apple store. The discounts may surprise you.

[woofmantoronto.livejournal.com]

Don't put the old laptop hard drive into a new laptop. While it is totally possible to do and people do do it, the laptop hard drives are notoriously break-down-able. It could be just about to blow on you as we speak so re-using it is not something I'd want to do.

And stay away from the big box shops, they're horrible, you need a nice small shop that "has a clue" and will build you a new system using "OEM" software versions which are W-A-Y cheaper than buying new boxed retail software off the shelf.

A propeller head chum of mine who taught me what's what calls Best Buy Worst Buy and I can see why;-) They are great for in store specials on mass market items, I love them for that, but for customized/cost effective special case one-off solutions, in my experience small shops can be better.

A small shop may be able to download your existing XP and software off the old hard drive onto the new hard drive and tweak XP to accept the installation. Then back the works up on a rescue disc which you can carry forward into the future.

I would avoid Vista at present. I've heard terribly mixed to negative reviews. The buzz reminds me of Window ME version that was the worst ever. I'd hold off if you can until "forced" to go to Vista, ie: when XP is absolutely no longer supported in any possible way, ie no more anti-virus software for it and no other security updates for it. Then I'd go Vista but not a moment before, in my opinion.

Good Luck:-)

[apparentparadox]

I agree. Intel-based Macs can boot into windows if needed, or run stuff while running Mac OS X. Personally, I run VMWare Fusion, but that's just what seemed better to me when I got it (you can try out both for free!).

I know that VMWare Fusion has a pretty automated "migrate info from my old PC into this new system", and I assume that Parallels does as well. That includes, I think, all the registry information that is so necessary to keep things running.

I hate Office 2007

[sfmini.livejournal.com]

As a power user of Office, I must say I am totally frustrated by 07. To find what used to be right in front of me in a tool bar is six tabs and four tool-bars later. Some things that I used to use on an every day basis are so lost behind these tabs and bars that even if I find them once I can't remember where it was the second time. Every time I want to do something I have to sit and think of how they might have put it, to give me some clue as to where to start looking. There are things I've given up on finding. I just go to another computer in the office and use an older version. I'm not a lightweight, I can catch on to almost any software quickly, but not this. God help the not-so-educated office workers that rely on this program. I'd walk away from it except that I can't let myself get behind in learning a program which will be standard in most offices before long.

[kent4str.livejournal.com]

I run XP on my Mac in Parallels. Overall the system runs flawlessly, to the extent that my music manipulation software runs without a hitch, so I think it'd run just about anything seamlessly. But I didn't try to migrate any data, so I can't help you with that.

[paulintoronto.livejournal.com]

I could go on and on and on about how much I love Word 2007. I pay no attention to any other part of Office.

[mh58.livejournal.com]

Don't forget that you can keep the windows version and use it with VMWare or Parallels just fine. A lot of software can be "cross upgraded" from PC to MAC and some software companies may even offer special pricing to just change the current version from one to the other.

[pulsecub.livejournal.com]

Hon, when I get there we can take some time and go over this. Dell is actually making some killer new laptops, and depending on what you want to spend, their new convertible-tablet is getting rave reviews. You don't have to get it with Vista, as Microsoft is still selling XP and SP3 for XP will be coming soon and is said to improve overall performance noticeably.

I've done the migration thing twice before, so I'll be happy to help with that too.

You may actually want to truck on down to CompUSA right now though; they're going out of business, and I believe there's a 20% off sale on all in-stock items.