AlohaBob PC Relocator Ultra Control 2004 [Old Version]

List Price: $69.99

Customer Reviews:

Good preparation is the Key [Posted on 2004-07-01]
I have a Win 98 laptop with minor keyboard probelms. Since it might get worse with the time being and I want to upgrade to a WinXP PC, I went out to get a new desktop. At the store I was told to get Alohabob PC Relocator Ultra Control(Later I found out---Funny name yet does serious job).

I installed the program and used a USB cable. It did not seem to connect with the new PC at first.I was wondering why, becasue the set up was kind of straight forward. Later I found out that I did not get the lastest version of PC Relocator Ultra. So I downloaded the latest version on my old laptop and burn it on a CD. Get the update on the target as well. I learn new things everyday: ALWAYS get latest updates on softwares. And the tech guys there were kind enough to walk me through the connection process. I was told that preparation is the key to success migrations. So I stop what I was doing, came up a clear list of the things I want to transfer. With the suggestions from tech support, I filter out things that I should install manaully myself, things such as drivers and freewares. Then I went back to finished up the migration. Guess what, it worked beautifully. My email was transfer over and some applications that I no longer have the CDs. I was totally amazed on the result.
Now I can totally understand why there are such good and bad reviews for PC Relocator. I am glad that I have some good experience with this product.
Sugggestions:
1)Make sure you are running the latest version
2)Preparation is the Key: knowing what you want to transfer and what/how things can be transfer

Fantastic software---transfers outlook successfully [Posted on 2004-07-27]
As a frequent traveler, I know the pain/trouble of dealing with home computer and the laptop I used for business trips.
It is really inconvenient that I can't have my work computer and my laptop identical. Friends of mine recommend Alohabob PC Relocator to transfer data between work computer and laptop. But some of the reviews are not so convincing.

I have a Win XP (home) laptop and desktop. My main concerns are my outlook emails and address books, and my documents files. So I make a call myself to see if it is going to work for me. Support was very professional and helpful; they gave me a lot of tips on how to transfer outlook data. Basically, I need to create an Outlook folder in my documents folder. Export my outlook data into that folder. Do a selective migration only transferring my documents folder. Once the data got transfer, and then import them to my existing outlook inbox. I was told to do this not to override my current Outlook data.

Guess what, it transferred my outlook data smoothly as well as my documents folder. This is absolutely fantastic software and company. I definitely will use this software again.

Works, but not as I thought. [Posted on 2004-09-29]
Based on the other reviews, I bought PC Relocator UltraControl. After installing, I realized that to have a smooth relocation that you need to plan, plan, and plan. Your old PC needs to be well organized too. Because of various reasons, my old PC's two hard drives were partitioned into several partitions. Programs were not installed on the C drive with the OS and PC Relocator did not like this. Relocator puts each of the partitions in separate folders on the new PC drive if you do not have exactly the same drive configuration on the new PC. Of course the programs did not work properly on the new PC after the relocation since they were not in the correct location so I un-did the relocation, manually installed most of my programs on the new PC, and then re-did the relocation. A number of shareware and freeware programs could not be relocated. Another quirk is that while the program was collecting data on the old PC, I started the process on the new PC and I kept getting an error that said that it could not find my old PC on the network. I checked all connections and confirmed that I could communicate to the old PC through the LAN. I discovered that I had to wait for the old PC to finish collecting data. PC Relocator does move some information which was helpful but I expected it to be complete and simple. I spent about 16 hours getting the relocation to work right and to get the new PC set up after the relocation.

80% effective 10% disaster [Posted on 2006-05-10]
I did a transfer to an identical new computer using the expert mode. Both computers were the same make, model number, setup, operating system and service pack. All of the programs on the old computer worked there.

1. 85% of the programs transferred and worked
2. 5% of the transferred programs did not work and had to be reinstalled. Of these 2/3 could not be made to work even with reinstalation.
3. 10% of the programs were not transferred and had to be installed

4. Several programs I selected to not be transferred were and had to be uninstalled.

The transfer took 6 hours for 25 GB using the network method.

You will have to go through and use every program on the new computer to see which ones do not work. This took 10 hours or so.

Overall, this 16 hours was much less than the two months of time I took to load the programs from scratch on the first computer. Fortunatley the programs that could not run on the new computer were not that necessary.

You might want to try loading the must have programs first on the new computer and then transferring the rest.

It damaged Windows XP... [Posted on 2006-06-08]
I have a client who had just bought a new Dell notebook. His assistant tried to do her boss a favor by running AlohaBob to transfer their data from their current Windows XP Professional notebook to a new XP notebook.

AlohaBob has some odd side-effects of some of the transferred programs sort of being installed but not always working properly. But the show-stopper was that we had to install Top Producer, a Real Estate agent's management program. The installation for Top Producer simply would not launch. We tried many work-arounds and I had assumed it was Top Producer's fault. I spent several hours on the phone with Top Producer's 1st and then 2nd tier tech support. To their credit, they were very patient.

It turns out that Top Producer is an older 16-bit, graphical user interface (GUI)-based program. On a technical note, this kind of program has Windows first launch its NTVDM module, prior to running the program. Each attempted launch of Top Producer would launch NTVDM as a process, but it would never progress beyond that point. We had assumed the problem was with only Top Producer until we also discovered that Windows XP's own SYSEDIT program would no longer launch either -- also a 16-bit GUI-based program. Only NTVDM would launch, but not SYSEDIT.

The upshot was that I had to reload Windows XP back onto this brand new computer. Top Producer then installed flawlessly.

I'm sure that Alohabob must work properly for most people, but my personal experience with it was less than stellar. I wouldn't recommend this type of product.

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