Otay, ya'll geeksters...
Here's whut I got...
We have a new tech 'puter at the shop, but it doesn't have all of the programs we use on it. It was set-up with the two major tech programs(AllData, and Mitchell). So, I want to take the old 'puter(Dell), and transfer some of the programs on it to the new one. Here's the problem...the old 'puter does not have a burner. It do have several USB ports, tho.
Can I use a USB cable, and transfer the programs/info from the old one, to my 'puter here at home, so I can burn a disc to load onto the new 'puter at the shop?
I do NOT want to buy a burner for the old 'puter, so that ain't gonna happen, unless that's the ONLY way I can accomplish this. I would much rather just plug into the USB ports, and "Copy/paste". or whatever.
The programs I want to transfer are gonna be more than a portable storage device can hold. We're looking at around 20gig or more.

Allright, so...let's here it! Whut kin eye do?

no real geek here but i would think if you used one of those thumb drive, you would be able to down load onto it and then plug it into the new puter and upload to it, almost sounds to easy, probably gonna screw up some thing.  The only thing i would be concerned about would be the drivers or exec files if the old program needed them and the new computer does not have them, but you can get drivers off of the net. good luck hope it helped alittle if not then you got someone else to blame, glad to help in either way.
L

Office Depot and Best Buy both carry a transfer program to do just what you are looking for. It is fairly simple to use, just tell it what programs or information that you want to transfer (it will walk you through) and it will do it for you.

Along the lines of what Larry is talking about, you could also get a stand alone hard drive (Sam's club and everywhere else).  They plug into a power source and connect with a USB cable.  Save it to the stand alone drive, then connect the drive to the new puter and import/copy it in.  This way you can get lots of data and take it to whatever puter you want.  Thumb drives are nice, but somewhat limited in size, especially when you are talking about taking several entire programs, not just the data for them.

Do these programs put files into the system 32 dir? If it does Just tranferring the the programs may not work. Can't you do a direct hookup with the eithernet cards and transfer that way? Make the 2 machines into a workgroup.

It has been my experience that transferring programs from PC to PC doesn't work very well, mostly because of all the drivers and bizillion other files an installation process drops in various places.  Your best bet in getting everything correctly on the new PC is to locate the original software install disks.

Yup

[QUOTE=Norsky] It has been my experience that transferring programs from PC to PC doesn't work very well, mostly because of all the drivers and bizillion other files an installation process drops in various places. Your best bet in getting everything correctly on the new PC is to locate the original software install disks.

[/QUOTE]

Well, see...that thar be the problem. They be history...gone...vam-moosed...shange-hied...terminated...prolly hanging on some MS13's rear-view mirror..

And, as I stated befo, there is too much data for a thumb-drive...

I was afeered this may not be possible, but I gonna at least give it a shot, iffin I can...

You could always take the hard drive out of the old machine and put it into the new one.  You could also get a kit that converts the old hard drive into a stand alone hard drive that would allow you to boot and run the program from the old hard drive and store the data on the new hard drive.

DANG!! Youse guys is wantin me to spend MONEY?!?!?
The "new" puter doesn't have room for another drive...it's purdy small, dimension-wise. Some sort of compact model(it is actually a Compaq(?) brand)
Also, da boss-man wants to take the old 'puter up to the house in Colorado...don't know why.