First things first! I'm back after taking a holy dip in the sacred Niagara waterfalls and it was one helluva journey! A detailed travelogue is coming soon...! :-o)
And, my good old lappy has emerged successful out of the garage after quite a bit of overhaul. New Mboard, RAM, Heat Sink and AC Adapter. On top of it, I got rid of the crapware that came with Vista and it is now clean and good...!
Everytime I perform this ritual of formatting and reinstalling the OS, the real pain in the ass is the post installation setup that needs to be done. The Drivers and the software required for day to day activities - a.k.a Firefox, Office Applications, Acrobat, MPlayer Classic and a few other tools without which Vista/Winblow$ would prove meaningless.
Ironically, out of all those listed above, Firefox is usually the most complex to install. With a couple of themes, 10+ addons and plugins and humongous sites for which firefox remembers the passwords for, it is by far most customized software that I use on my my computer. Usually, I end up doing this all over again.
This time though, I wanted to check out if there is an easier alternative for this and I was amazed to find out the simplest solution that was available.
Voila! You end up getting the same profile that you were using on the new computer...! Everything that you had is out there - Your bookmarks, your addons, your themes, your passwords and what not...!
Now comes the million dollar question...
How safe is all your online data?Agreed that firefox isn't the best of platforms for Saving Passwords. If you ask me, even IE does a better job. With a click of a button, Firefox shamelessly reveals all your passwords in the UI iteslf. But hey, After all that can be done (atleast that is what I thought) only if somebody gets hold of my password to my OS.
With the profile transfer happening seemlessly across Computers and Operating system, I wonder how safe my online data is? Afterall, any n00b who gets access to my computer (even as a simple user) can hack into the filesystem, copy the profile onto someother computer and use all my personal data with little hacking expertise...!
Now tell me, is such portability a boon or bane?
And, my good old lappy has emerged successful out of the garage after quite a bit of overhaul. New Mboard, RAM, Heat Sink and AC Adapter. On top of it, I got rid of the crapware that came with Vista and it is now clean and good...!
Everytime I perform this ritual of formatting and reinstalling the OS, the real pain in the ass is the post installation setup that needs to be done. The Drivers and the software required for day to day activities - a.k.a Firefox, Office Applications, Acrobat, MPlayer Classic and a few other tools without which Vista/Winblow$ would prove meaningless.
Ironically, out of all those listed above, Firefox is usually the most complex to install. With a couple of themes, 10+ addons and plugins and humongous sites for which firefox remembers the passwords for, it is by far most customized software that I use on my my computer. Usually, I end up doing this all over again.
This time though, I wanted to check out if there is an easier alternative for this and I was amazed to find out the simplest solution that was available.
Navigate to %APPDATA%/Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles on the Old Computer.
Copy contents of the ((xxyyzz)).default and keep it aside.
Install firefox on the new computer.
Copy whatever was inside the ((xxyyzz)).default into the ((aabbcc)).default that is created in the new computer.
Start Firefox.
Voila! You end up getting the same profile that you were using on the new computer...! Everything that you had is out there - Your bookmarks, your addons, your themes, your passwords and what not...!
Now comes the million dollar question...
How safe is all your online data?Agreed that firefox isn't the best of platforms for Saving Passwords. If you ask me, even IE does a better job. With a click of a button, Firefox shamelessly reveals all your passwords in the UI iteslf. But hey, After all that can be done (atleast that is what I thought) only if somebody gets hold of my password to my OS.
With the profile transfer happening seemlessly across Computers and Operating system, I wonder how safe my online data is? Afterall, any n00b who gets access to my computer (even as a simple user) can hack into the filesystem, copy the profile onto someother computer and use all my personal data with little hacking expertise...!
Now tell me, is such portability a boon or bane?
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