Cloning a Laptop for Dummies

transferring files between computers

In case you hadn't noticed, no matter what you're measuring half the people in the world are below average.¹ It's amazing how insulted some people get when we say that, which we suspect is a proxy for locating the below-average half. Be that as it may, its a safe bet that half the freelancers writing about computers know less than average – and today's DotD is a case in point, as Dianne Christensen-Hermance demonstrates a tenuous grasp of technology in the eHow.com post "How to Transfer From Laptop to Laptop" (at one time appearing² on the niche site Techwalla.com).

Christensen-Hermance, who appears at eHow under the name Dianne Hermance, has been here before four times under her hyphenated name and once unhyphenated, in three different categories and from three different sites. We call that a renaissance dumbass, ourselves. Today's dumbassery is of the computer variety, her second offense. As in her previous appearance, Dianne oversimplifies because of a lack of knowledge. According to DCH, to copy from laptop to laptop your options are to

1. Burn smaller files onto a blank CD-R/CD-RW...
2. Transfer the files to a portable flash drive...
3. Consider transferring the files to an external hard drive...
4. Email files as attachments if they are small...

		All of those are reasonable solutions if you want to copy a file or two. All of those are also so simplistic as to be insulting. What Christensen-Hermance misses — even though her introduction says "Laptop computers wear out after a while and it may be necessary to replace them. You may want to transfer programs, files or photos to the new laptop..." — is that the question is not about how to transfer a few little files, it's how to copy the whole damned thing. Where Dianne's lack of experience and her lack of education (J-school, of course) rears an ugly little head is:

1. Can you imagine trying to copy an 800-GB hard drive to 600-MB CDs? (133 of them...)
2. Can you imagine trying to copy a terabyte hard drive to flash drives?
3. Has she never heard of backups? the cloud?
4. And most of all, has Dianne never heard about a LAN or a direct cable connection? 

Whatever the case, Christensen-Hermance's unfamiliarity with the process is obvious from the notion that you can simply "transfer programs... to the new laptop." No, dummy, you have to do a fresh install of most software, not just copy it to a floppy.

When we see stupidity like this published, we here at the Antisocial Network gnash our collective teeth. Then we get busy and write an award description like this one, handing Dianne her sixth Dumbass of the Day award. What a maroon...

¹ assuming, of course, that the parameter being measured has normal distribution
² The original has been deleted by Leaf Group, but may still be accessible using the Wayback machine at archive.org. Its URL was techwalla.com/articles/transfer-laptop-laptop

copyright © 2017-2022 scmrak

DD - COMPUTERS