When upgrading from one PC to another, there things you'll always want to take with you.

Documents, letters, music tracks, videos, email messages and contacts are par for the course, but what about software applications too?

Yes, everything can be reinstalled from scratch, but that’s time-consuming and prone to a new round of teething troubles.

Laplink's PC Mover Vista aims to strip this hassle by copying all applications, data and settings automatically. It's compatible with any computer running Windows 95 and above and will move things to, not only Vista, but Windows 98 and Windows XP computers too.

The copying doesn’t circumvent copy protection, so if you've a version of Office, say, which came with your old PC, you won’t be able to run it after migration, unless it’s a full retail copy and you've got the serial number.

Using PC Mover is simple. Connect the two PCs via a home network or through the special USB-to-USB cable provided and run the wizard-like program. Depending on the amount of stuff housed on the PC, the move can take minutes or hours, but it can be left unattended, perhaps overnight.

However, its major problem is that you only get to use the software once. Laplink's £50 asking price covers the software and the cable, but the software licence enables you to connect just two PCs together.

Once migration is complete, the two PCs can be kept synchronised through the supplied PCsync software, but to add files from another old PC, or to migrate between different PCs, you have to pay a further £30 for an additional licence. What's more, there's very little choice in what gets copied; you can’t pick which applications you want to shift, for example.

It's for these reasons that, for all its simplicity, PC Mover scores very low. The pay-per-use sales model could work out costly and its limited versatility when copying applications put us off.

Vista compatible: yes