Originally Posted By: dougwalkabout

The other cool thing about Linux is you can take the hard drive from a machine, plunk it into another, and it will run! It does a double-take the first time (whoa, this is different!) but it works. (Except: 64-bit installs only work on 64-bit systems. 32-bit installs run on everything.)

This is true. I've done it a few times.

With Windows, you can clone a hard drive, put the cloned drive back into the same computer the original came from, and it won't boot. Some cloning software does better than others at trying to iron out the Windows-induced difficulties. But in general, if you are expected a clone/swap like this to work in Windows, you are skating on thin ice. No way are you going to take a harddrive out of one Windows computer, insert it into a different computer, and get anything useful to happen.