Author Archives: Laplink Software

World Backup Day

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world-backup-day-2013March 31 was World Backup Day. It is a good reminder every year that most people do not back up their PC data regularly. We forget that some of our data is fairly unique: family pictures, financial data , important write-ups, music, and videos. The hardware has become very reliable, but hard drives and PCs (or Macs) do fail. Often the first sign of a failure is too late and the data is corrupted and irretrievable. According to some well-known research, only 6% of users back up their data on a daily basis. Daily backups might not be the answer for most of us, but a regular backup is as necessary as locking your house or car. Take another look at Laplink DiskImage, an easy tool to create your backup. Moreover, you can create a full backup of your system, allowing you to restore your whole computer in case of a catastrophic failure. Matched with PCmover Image & Drive Assistant, you can even restore your applications, data, and settings to a newer operating system. No other software can offer that. Don’t wait another day!

A New PC – Fear or Joy?

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Laplink launches new “Free Transfer Assistance”

If you are like most people, you expect your personal computer will make you more efficient. It’s a tool to get more stuff done more quickly. And even as we use smartphones, tablets, or other computing devices, we still have significant reliance on our PCs.

Whether using Word, Excel, PowerPoint, or other productivity-focused software; whether editing videos or pictures; or whether running various games or entertainment programs, we expect our PCs to be there for us.

However, the world of personal computing has become more complicated, growing to include home networks, hotspots and interacting with other PCs, tablets, and phones. As the PC and its environment become more complicated, the typical PC user is more likely to need professional help now and then.

Getting a new personal computer should be exciting and rewarding. For many, though, the thought of setting up a new computer creates much fear and uncertainty. Mike Hogan, an editor of the well-respected Barron’s Magazine, recently asked in context of replacing a PC: “How many programs, utilities and games under your Windows Start button would you like to reinstall? Have all the discs? How many of your programs are no longer published, or require new versions ‘improved’ by limiting your favorite features?”

Over the last ten years, Laplink PCmover has made the new setup process much easier by automatically moving applications, data, and settings from an old PC to a new PC regardless of the Windows version. PCmover is still the top-selling and only program that can transfer all your “stuff” to a new PC, upgrade your old one, or restore a hard drive or image to a new Windows version. As Mr. Hogan also said in his recent article in reference to using PCmover to set up his new PC: “I’ve never been able to get a new PC looking this much like its predecessor before, regardless of how many hours I invested…”

Nonetheless, even using PCmover to set up a new PC can be complex. From customer feedback, we find that most customers were very happy with PCmover but some had other issues, such as not having their home networks properly set up. Sometimes the old and new PCs were prevented from communicating due to Windows’ settings or other software. Other users were unsure which applications were compatible with their new operating system. There were also questions related to PCs being a part of different workgroups or corporate domains.

Given this feedback and recognizing the growing complexity of PC environments, PCmover now comes with “Free Transfer Assistance” , a free phone call to a trained professional who will assist or actually perform the transfer remotely, helping the user through each step of the new PC set-up process.*

Over 95% of customers are either satisfied or very satisfied with this service, making PCmover as close as you can get to “A Technician in the Box”. We can’t do magic but we can make setting up a new PC simple.

For 30 years, Laplink has been the leader in helping you move to a new PC and we’re still finding ways to make it easier than ever!

Switching Hardware? Avoid The Risk of Data Theft.

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from the Chairman & CEO of Laplink: Thomas Koll

With the recent launch of Microsoft’s Windows 8 which will trigger a lot of replacement sales of PCs and Laplink’s upcoming release of Laplink SafeErase Version 6, it is a good time to remind ourselves that all data we have deleted from our PCs is in no way safely deleted. Most data can be restored from a hard drive with commercially available products. Even formatting a hard drive is not good enough. My white paper from last year is a good and quick read to understand the risk associated with data deletion.

click below for the white paper:

http://is.gd/securityriskwhitepaper

 

 

The Perils of the Cloud

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The “cloud” is hot.

We all talk about the next great thing: solutions for cloud computing. Venture Capitalists are raising new funds for cloud computing, software companies are rapidly developing new solutions for the cloud, and new services are announced every day. It is clear that since the late 1990s, we have seen a strong demand for application services in the cloud or application services hosted in the cloud, although the names have changed. “Cloud” is just the new name. The promise is great: new Internet-based applications that don’t require local implementations, opportunities for easily and quickly connecting users to new services, and simple but robust back-end management of these cloud services.

As a result, there are great new services that can make our daily business routines so much easier than before and without any upfront investment. Take one category that is strategic to all companies selling, marketing, and supporting customers: customer relationship management (CRM). Traditionally, these applications were residing on your PC or on the company’s server. The implementation of  larger sales forces was extremely complex and expensive while small businesses could live with a desktop application and home offices often used Outlook as their main depository for customer information. Now, however, for a small monthly fee we see highly complex and beneficial cloud services that offer full-featured systems only large companies could afford in the past. No setup costs, no IT investments -  just register, pay, and go. No doubt these services have improved the efficiency and effectiveness of sales organizations greatly. And some of these service companies are generating billions in revenues by satisfying the needs of their customers. Life is good.

There are, however, some questions that need serious discussions. For example, who owns the data in the cloud and can you have access to your “property” at any time? A few months ago I had an experience that gave me pause on exactly that subject.  Having had signed up for several different cloud services for sales management and marketing automation, we learned that some of them had merged to deliver improved services. As we tried to align the different contracts, we ran into a disagreement with the new company. Because we could not agree on the needed modification for one service and subsequently disagreed over the amount due, all services provided to us by the combined company were turned off. Without warning our sales came to a grinding halt. The message we received during calls to our representative was very clear: if you refuse to pay what we believe is owed under one contract, we will turn off all services. We had no choice but to pay what was demanded; the services were turned back on a few hours later.

During our disconnected state, we had no access to our customer data, our marketing programs, or any information stored on the cloud servers. If this conflict had not been resolved, we would have had no way of accessing, retrieving, or backing-up our data to local stores. And this begs the question of who owns the data in the cloud services provides by others. Is the information we create protected from use by others? Are the creations protected by copyright? Are my emails that are stored on third-party servers “my” emails or is all data owned by the service provider? The answer by some service providers is clear and manifested in their license agreements: the service provider owns all data and can do as it chooses with that data.

I love the cloud. I love cloud services. But when choosing a cloud service, it is critical to clearly understand that it can be “turned off” and you might not have the ability, nor the legal right, to retrieve any of your creative work, your collected data, or other content that you think of as “yours.”

So while I can honestly say the cloud really is a great thing, it is not a panacea. And for some cloud services, you might be better off to just say no.

The TOP 10 Reasons to Use Laplink® PCmover® Enterprise

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Often I am asked to name the top 10 reasons why our customers select PCmover Enterprise. Each organization has different requirements, which means not all these reasons are applicable to every situation. However, from many discussions and customer feedback, I have comprised this generalized list:

  1. PCmover copies applications from an old PC to a new PC and “installs” them automatically, even between different versions of Windows. This is actually not easy. No other product available offers this feature. Most competing solutions move data and settings only; or if they move applications, the usage scenario is very restricted (e.g., copying an image of the old PC to a virtual machine on the new PC).
  2. The Policy Manager in PCmover Enterprise allows the IT administrator to easily structure the migration of applications, data, and settings to the specific needs of the organization, department, or user group. Migration options for PCmover can be pre-defined in a policy file that allows the end-user or IT staff to execute the actual migration of applications, data, and settings while still being controlled by the administrator. The Policy Manager, unlike many IT tools, is easy to learn and requires no third-party consultants or programmers. An IT administrator can create a policy with minimal training, providing full control with flexibility to execute from a centralized location or to do so in a decentralized process. And PCmover will provide reports and notifications to supervisors. The result is “IT Managed migrations even for unmanaged PCs” which only PCmover can deliver.
  3. PCmover saves organizations a minimum of $300 dollars per desktop deployed or upgraded. In general, PCmover generates savings for any organization, from businesses to educational institutions to government agencies. In some extreme examples, we have customers claim that PCmover has saved them over $1500 in logistical costs per new PC deployed/ A migration could be performed locally in a remote location without sending IT personnel or shipping loaner PCs back and forth – all while allowing the IT administrator to remain in full control of the migration. Laplink has published several white papers on the subject.
  4. PCmover is easy to use and is a low fixed investment. Most organizations using PCmover have chosen to do so because they can save a lot of time, money, and aggravation. By using PCmover, organizations are utilizing a fully-automated process without a significant upfront investment and are replacing a much more manual process. Some competing software is also low investment, but then significant labor costs are incurred to develop customized scripting and related testing. PCmover is so easy to use that organizations often allow their end-users to kick-off a zero- or light-touch migration process. The preparation and testing of PCmover Enterprise as well as perfecting the policies used in different departments and user groups is minimal with savings 10-20 times the cost of the software.
  5. PCmover can be used with any connectivity options. PCs can be connected across the local network (LAN or WLAN) or direct PC-to-PC using a Laplink USB or Ethernet cable. Even a migration via external media (e.g., network server, portable hard drive, etc.) is supported. No matter where the PCs are located and even if not on a network, PCmover is able to perform its functions.
  6. PCmover supports In-Place Upgrade Scenarios even when Microsoft does not, such as upgrading from Windows XP to Windows 7. A high percentage of PCs currently running Windows XP can run Windows 7 without any problems. Microsoft chose not to support this upgrade scenario. In fact, Microsoft suggests that all applications be reinstalled and the settings reconfigured. PCmover solves this problem and saves a substantial mount of IT time and end-user downtime with very little cost or effort. It is the only software to reassign all applications, settings, and data to your new Windows 7 environment. After a “custom” install of Windows (no re-formatting of the hard drive), PCmover does the rest.
  7. PCmover restores images and hard drives independent of the Windows operating system. If you want to restore an image of a Windows XP computer after a catastrophic failure to a brand-new hardware, you will have a very difficult time. Using your imaging software, the XP image cannot be restored to a new Windows 7 PC without overwriting Windows 7; and it is almost certain that Windows XP could not properly support your new hardware. Again, PCmover is the only software that can restore your applications, data, and settings from an old image to a new PC when the operating system is different. The same concept applies to transferring the contents from an old hard drive to a new PC. After connecting the hard drive to the new PC, use PCmover Image Assistant to automatically transfer the applications, data, and settings from that old hard drive to your new PC – without affecting your new operating system.
  8. PCmover integrates with the Microsoft SCCM. Many customers use the System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) to perform their roll-outs to new PCs. PCmover not only integrates easily with SCCM – Laplink is actually a certified SCCM Partner. It also extends the functionality of Microsoft’s User State Migration Tool (USMT), which is often used to perform basic migration functions. The USMT, like with most free tools from Microsoft, requires a costly investment upfront to script the procedures for USMT to perform.
  9. PCmover doesn’t leave data behind, even if encrypted. Many competing solutions define what folders contain data to be migrated to the new PC. However,  if end-users are able to set up and use folders on their old PC, then it is almost impossible to be sure the data is captured and copied to the new PC. This is not a problem for PCmover. Encrypted data is not a problem for PCmover if the same encryption software is used by both the new and old PC. You can manage a migration project without modifying or removing encryption software, which ensures a safe, secure, and efficient transfer of data between PCs. Many large corporations and government entities have selected PCmover because it effortlessly supports encryption technologies.
  10. PCmover has superior user management functions. Not only does PCmover transfer all installed users (Professional, Business andEnterprise editions), it supports domain users, non-domain users, and users that may or may not be connected to the corporate network. With PCmover, you can selectively choose user accounts, change user mappings, or filter non-essential users, giving you complete control over who gets transferred.  PCmover also supports the migration of users between different domains, making PCmover the perfect tool for any large organization moving to a new domain through a merger or acquisition.

There are many more reasons why every organization should at least evaluate PCmover Enterprise before finalizing their migration project plans. There is no software which can compete with PCmover’s broad spectrum of functionality and value. It will save any organization a substantial amount of time and money from the first day of usage.

Approaching 30

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Approaching 30 years of age is a big deal. It is – for some – the final threshold to adulthood.  For companies in general, approaching 30 is not really a big deal given that many businesses have a 100 year plus tradition. But for a software company approaching 30 really is a big deal.

Has life really changed in the last 30 years? The basics are the same, but how we communicate, do our jobs and plan the future has dramatically changed. Today we use personal computers, tablets, and smart phones to do many routine tasks and have created a world without borders where information is always at your fingertips.

Laplink passed its 29th anniversary in May 2012. Wow! There really aren’t many software companies still around after 30 years.  For Laplink (or Traveling Software as it was called in the early days), it all started with building software for one of the first computing devices – the Radio Shack M100 built by

Kyocera. It was running a version of Basic with an i80C85 processor and had between 8 and 32k RAM. (That’s right – “k” as in kilobytes, not megabytes or gigabytes!) The built-in display was an 8×40 character LCD screen. Introduced in 1983, it retailed for over US $ 1,000. As with many tech people back in 1983, the founding members of the Laplink team (led by Mark Eppley) were fascinated by that device!

“T-Word” by Traveling Software was the first word processing software that could change its font size to adapt to the small LCD screen. It was followed by “T-View” to show a full page with 80 lines on a 40 line display. Then came products like the “Traveling Time Manager”, the “Traveling Sales Manager”, and even the “MacDos”. Traveling Software took on a lot of projects whose concepts were later made famous by the emerging Lotus, Microsoft, Ashton-Tate or Borland.

In 1986 LAPDOS was formally introduced, creating the first split screen environment for file transfer between devices – and the first OEM to ship this product was HP. LAPDOS evolved into LapLink, which achieved 115 kbps over a serial cable, far outclassing the usual speed at that time of 9.6 kbps.

Another break-through came in 1987 when the “Sharp Wizard Link” was introduced by Traveling Software with the ability to sync PIM information from the Sharp to a desktop PC.

In the early 90’s, innovation focused on file transfer and syncing of data. New versions of LapLink were introduced as well as the “Apple Newton PC-Link”. During those days, the “delta differentiation technology” SpeedSync® was invented, which transferred the difference within a file and not the entire file. Incidentally, a new product was launched at this time called WebEx which allowed offline browser access. Sometime later, a company named WebEx was formed and the trademarked name was sold by Laplink to this company.

Many other products and innovations followed. Over time, the name Traveling Software was changed to Laplink due to the popularity of that brand. Over 20 million customers used the LapLink product and many still have the famous Laplink cables in their homes.

Today, Laplink remains focused on its traditional software expertise: synchronization, file transfer, PC-to-PC migration, remote control, and similar technologies. Today, we are very proud to have the best- selling PC migration software in the world, PCmover, which helps consumers, professionals and even Top 100 enterprises save time and money when “moving” into a new PC.

Nearly 30 years of software development have been completed and there’s no end in sight. As Bill Gates so often said: “The future of technology is yet to come.”

Windows 8 – Ramping Up for Another Beta Candidate

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Here at Laplink we love new technology. As a software company it’s in our blood to be on the hunt for interesting or impactful developments in the tech world. And as a Gold-Certified partner of Microsoft, much of the software we create helps to better the experience users and businesses have with Microsoft products. Because of these two points we are very excited about Windows 8 and what it will mean to consumer’s world-wide. And if Windows 8 is doing anything, it’s generating some impactful discussion. Just check out this recent developer’s blog post regarding some recent UI changes. It’s more of a short-novel than a blog post, but interesting none-the-less.

We’re certainly getting closer to the rumored October release of Windows 8 (though nothing has been officially announced). In the next few weeks there is expected to be much more discussion regarding the final version and remaining beta candidates of Microsoft’s newest OS. Back in April we were told that the Windows 8 Release Preview would be landing in early June, and it just so happens that on June 6th Microsoft’s Steven Guggenheimer will be delivering a keynote address at Computex TAIPEI. Hopefully it will be here that we get a good preview or even a release announcement for the Release Preview of Windows 8.

Because Windows 8 is still being tweaked in its current form, talking about definite features is a little outside of our comfort zone. There are a lot of cool new features that Microsoft has been touting, and many of them are sure to be in the final release, but like the UI discussion linked above shows us that everything is subject to change.

We’ve talked about Windows 8 in the past. And with all the changes & ramped-up discussion lately we thought it would be a good idea to point out Laplink’s own tool that you can use with Windows 8 right now!

The PCmover Windows 8 Beta Assistant is available for all you testers out there that want to give Microsoft’s next OS a run for its money. This free tool is compatible with all of the beta builds of Windows 8 so the upcoming next beta versions are right in this software’s wheelhouse. The source PC must be running Windows 7 or 8 (64-bit) and the new PC must be running Windows 8 (64-bit); either or both PCs can be physical or virtual machines. With PCmover Windows 8 Beta Assistant you can undertake as many transfers as you want of programs, settings and files while making sure that everything you currently run is up-to-par with Windows 8 at this time. This is the friendliest way to try out Windows 8 before its release!

We know that our readers are generally a tech-savvy bunch. With the Windows 8 Beta Assistant tool you can try out and test Windows 8 to your heart’s content. No need to rely on the blogosphere to tell you what they think of the new UI in 8 or how Metro compliments the new Windows Store, find out for yourself with PCmover Windows 8 Beta Assistant!

 

Laplink Turns 29 Week 3 Prizes

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Today is a big day for not only Laplink, but lovers of excellent software worldwide. You guessed right, it’s our third Weekly Prize Giveaway! Get those entries in by sharing, liking, and commenting on our Facebook wall posts or tweeting according to the rules on our Laplink Turns 29 page.

Today we’ll be giving away to 7 lucky winners the following prizes:

 

Laplink Gold + Laplink Cable: Complete connectivity, remote control, file transfer and synchronization.

 

Laplink Everywhere: One click remote access to your PC!

 

Vipre Antivirus 2012: 100,000 new viruses and malware threats are created every day, with this antivirus your PC is protected.

 

Roboform: Manage multiple logins and passwords effortlessly across your favorite websites and applications.

 

Easy Duplicate Finder: Find Duplicate Files Instantly!

 

EasyFileShredder: Shreds custom files beyond recovery.

 

Or a sweet new Targus laptop bag: (quite fashionable).

Drawing of entries will end at 12:00 p.m. PST, so get in your tweets and likes by then!

Laplink Turns 29 Week 2 Prizes

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We’re coming up on picking the second round of prize winners today. Smell that in the air? It’s the sweet, sweet scent of quality software. Get those entries in by sharing, liking, and commenting on our Facebook wall posts or tweeting according to the rules on our Laplink Turns 29 page.

Today we’ll be giving away to 7 lucky winners the following prizes:

 

PCsync + Laplink Cable: The natural choice for fast, easy, automated file transfer and synchronization between PCs and Macs

 

PC Lock: Powerful and sophisticated encryption that automatically protects personal and sensitive data.

 

Vipre Antivirus 2012: 100,000 new viruses and malware threats are created every day, with this antivirus your PC is protected.

 

Roboform: Manage multiple logins and passwords effortlessly across your favorite websites and applications.

 

Easy Duplicate Finder: Find Duplicate Files Instantly!

 

EasyFileShredder: Shreds custom files beyond recovery.

 

Or a sweet new Targus laptop bag: (quite fashionable).

Drawing of entries will end at 12:00 p.m. PST, so get in your tweets and likes by then!