O&O Software Licenses Laplink PCmover Image Assistant

Laplink Software, Inc. announced that O&O Software GmbH, based in Berlin, Germany, will license PCmover Image Assistant, to be included in an upcoming version of O&O’s DiskImage.

"Laplink’s technology is instrumental to creating a better disk imaging tool,” said Olaf Kehrer, Managing Director of O&O Software. “This will set O&O DiskImage apart from similar tools, because we can now offer an ‘operating system independent restore’ function. From now on, users of DiskImage will have a choice when restoring an image – to restore the old operating system or to restore the image to a PC running a newer operating system. No other disk-imaging tool offers this.”

PCmover Image Assistant, scheduled for release in the second quarter of 2010, is built upon Laplink’s proprietary PCmover technology and is the only software capable of restoring a disk image to any PC regardless of differences in operating systems. While other utilities require an entire system to be restored, PCmover Image Assistant offers selective restoration, as well as complete control over the process.

“We are excited to partner with O&O Software to deliver a better imaging experience for their customers,” said Laplink CEO Thomas Koll. “Laplink’s goal is to make using a PC easier and better. That’s why we built tools like PCmover and that’s why we have agreed to license PCmover Image Assistant to O&O Software.”

Laplink’s PCmover is the top-selling PC-to-PC migration software in the world, and the only way to automatically move files, settings, and even programs from an old PC to a new one – with no reinstallation of programs required.

“Disk imaging software used to be very simple – make an image; restore an image,” explained Kehrer. “But that usually meant restoring the image to the same computer. O&O Software solved this problem by allowing ‘hardware independent’ restorations, so that the image of one PC could be restored to a different PC. But we were still restoring everything, including the operating system. Now, with this technology form Laplink, we can offer our users the choice to restore an image to a new PC with a different operating system.”

O&O Software expects to ship the first versions of DiskImage that include PCmover Image Assistant by the end of June, 2010.

O&O Software and Laplink jointly hosted a booth at CeBIT.