Resolved Transfer a user from a hard drive to another PC

The closest to identical you can probably get would be an identical computer and put the hard drive in it.

 

"Identical computer" is difficult and impractical to find as it is equivalent to an "old" model. If you have your computer damaged, are you going to buy the "old" model? The main point is: I have been talking about a "user" who uses a computer in a daily life. I have not been talking about about technical stuff which ignores a real person's needs.

One of the successful features of iPhone's iOS is that when you lose the iPhone, you can immediate buy the latest model, and restores the "user" data in minutes with just one button clicked! It is also simple to restore everything of a "user" in Mac's OS X Lion or Mountain Lion from the Time Machine backup completely. With Windows 7, or Windows 8, are you sure all your data are backed up COMPLETELY and restorable? Not unless you're doing a disk image backup, but the backup and restoration processes are practically unusable and costly.

 

You can do much the same on Windows and Android smartphones.

There's quit a bit of difference between a phone and a PC though.

 

But Microsoft is setting our expectation of having one OS only, i.e. Windows 8 on Windows Phone, Metro tablet and PC, isn't it?

 

The full-blown version of Windows 8 is too large to run on a smartphone.

For the PC, Microsoft is testing running Windows 8 from a USB key. It's called Windows To Go. (Windows To Go Frequently Asked Questions).

I don't think that it'll be long though before everything will be in the "cloud ". W-a-y too much trouble trying to keep all of our various devices running, synced, up-to-date, protected from attacks, etc. The days of Windows PC as we know it, are numbered.

 

When the rain "rises" to the cloud has the same speed as it "drops" to the ground, "cloud" will have a chance. While ADSL2+ has 16 Mbps download speed, the upload speed is only 1-2 Mbps under Annex M. I believe it will take impractically long time for the Internet to reach 20GBps duplex (upload and download). Cloud will be faded out in ten years, I optimistically believe, as more people realise its implications in personal data security and privacy. At the end of the day, what is "cloud "? Is it a re-packaged of old concept with new technologies? Cloud, like its siblings in the sky, changes and vanishes in moments. It's never got the retainability as a printed diary.

"Full-blown" Windows 8? Sorry, how many of us are running Windows 7 Ultimate on our PC? How many PCs are using 100% CPU at all time? How big is Windows 8? 32GB? My iPad is 64GB. I believe a Metro tablet can have 128GB SSD if Microsoft wants it.

 

We'll see . . . I hope.

I'm out.