- What’s Included and What Works
- How the Wizard Handles Application Settings
- What About Data Files?
- Touring the File and Settings Transfer Wizard
- Summary
How the Wizard Handles Application Settings
Even under RC1, the File and Settings Transfer Wizard was able to get all the settings for each Microsoft application. Of course, I had to load up each of the Microsoft applications I had onto the Whistler partitions already running on the laptop, workstation, and server for this to happen correctly. The same template used in Word by default came up when Word was invoked in Whistler, and the same held true for the Excel sessions started immediately after the File and Settings Transfer Wizard was completed.
The File and Settings Transfer Wizard does not, however, move settings for Adobe's products, Sun's StarOffice products, IBM's Notes applications, or any other third-party applications at this time. That is troublesome, especially if you are using publishing applications such as Adobe PageMaker, for example, which is full of preferences and settings. That was troubling about the entire Application settings experience; none of the settings from any other applications but Microsoft-authored ones worked. The Whistler teams at Microsoft stated that these third-party applications will be supported in the initial release, yet today it's difficult to get Adobe PageMaker to work in Windows XP, just as it does in Windows 2000 and Windows NT. The only alternative is to revert back to the manually based methods that the File and Settings Transfer Wizard was created to overcome.