As part of my ongoing quest to find a replacement computer for the iPad Pro I’ve been using, I’m now on my second system. The first, the Levovo MIIX 510 was great and after a week I had it running with all my necessary apps and service. But I’m now on my second test system, a Dell XPS 13. After wiping the Dell so I could start with a clean system, I thought I would look into migration tools for moving to a new computer. This is an area Microsoft needs to improve on.
For the last few years I’ve been predominantly a Mac user. And one of the neat things Apple has included in macOS (and OS X before it) was Migration Assistant. This tool lets you easily move apps, data and settings from one Mac to another either by using a backup, a direct cable connection or across a network.
I expected a similar tool in Windows 10. After all, many people swap computers regularly (although not weekly as I’m doing at the moment) so being able to easily port all your stuff from one machine to another is useful. And Microsoft did have the Windows Easy Transfer tool but that was only for Windows 7 and 8 – it’s not for anything after Windows 8.1.
There are some paid options, generally costing arounf the US$45 mark such as EaseUS Todo PCTrans Free 9.0 but the free version is limited to just two applications. And Microsoft did have a deal for Laplink’s PC Mover Express for a while but that free offer has expired.
So, I resorted to manually installing my apps last night rather than fork out my hard earned.
So, what do you recommend? Is there a “go to” tool for this?
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