There are a couple of considerations with your request. OS will transfer over but several things will happen with the first boot. First the OS will have to reconfigure any drivers since the hardware will be different. If you are lucky the drivers will self install but if not you will have to manually do so. That can be a difficult task for a novice but not impossible. Second the OS will invoke Windows Activation with a new motherboard / CPU. If your license will allow you to transfer to another machine, you should be able to activate on the new machine. However if you are using Vista from an OEM (preinstalled with computer) then you can not transfer it to another computer (unless you have a Vista install with a RETAIL version). Finally even if the OS boots correctly and can be transferred to a new machine there can be errors in the OS that can be difficult to solve and figure out. You may end up spending more time debugging the install rather than just starting from scratch.

You can certainly fire up the old OS and programs onto the new machine. If it works then great. However if you have problems, just give up and go for a reinstall. Remember that some of your programs may also invoke a product activation and may hiccup as well when you make the change. Windows Office will do the same thing as Windows OS when booted on a new machine but you can transfer those licenses to new machines (although you have to read your license).

Bert is absolutely right about the use of the imaging software. That is probably your best bet and the imaging software is a good product to have around. I would respectively disagree about Symantec Norton Ghost, I have found it to work well (but certainly the only Norton product I would ever use). Alternatively you can image into a virtual machine to run the old OS.

I personally think that you should just install from the ground up. Start clean with a new OS install, reinstall the apps and recover the data.

You can plug your old hard drive into the new computer and just access the data on the drive. Make sure that you image or back up the drive before booting onto a new machine. Alternatively you an get a USB hard drive kit and drop the drive into an external drive case to use.

Geoff