Lily Malcolm visited her local Radio Shack and CompUSA stores today, and came back with this nugget of knowledge:

If the CompUSA people really knew much about computers, they wouldn’t be working at CompUSA.

In all seriousness, there are a number of solutions to the problem of getting data from one’s old computer to one’s new computer. If both computers have an Ethernet jack, the preferred option is to either (a) connect both computers to an Ethernet hub or switch using regular Ethernet cables or (b) get a “crossover Ethernet cable.” You can also get something flashy that will walk you through the procedure, like LapLink, but I’m pretty sure the basic software is built into recent versions of Windows… you may need to set up “Home Networking” to do it.

Me? I usually just pull the hard drive out of the old PC, slap it in the new one, and copy the files that way. It’s normally faster, but far more intimidating for the novice.