From Physical to Virtual
Lindsay Donaghe describes in detail the process of making an old system (such as that laptop you are replacing) available as a virtual system.
This solves the familiar “Did I remember to grab ALL the files I may need?” problem. (No, you didn’t. I just went through this a few weeks, and I forgot to backup my Thunderbird email configuration. Grrr.)
He uses NTBackup (free) and chose VMWare as his virtualization engine. Very cool idea, described well.
[via Dave Winer's experimental River of News service]
On Scripting News, Winer gives snarky as the River of News login and password. This will likely go away, check it out while you can.