Can I do this?

my laptop old and  heavy, am considering buying a small tiny one. is it possible to transfer all the programs, data, software, photos, etc etc onto a external hard drive then carry that hard drive to my vacation destination, where i will buy the new machine. then simply move all info from the external hard drive onto the new computer. can i do that?  sounds much too good to be true.

Yes. It's not hard if you've set yourself up for doing so previously but if not, you can still do it.

You can use Norton Ghost to back up your whole system to an external or DVD. (Windows)

Norton Ghost can be found here http://tr.im/JsMs as a torrent and be sure to talk like a pirate while downloading.

It is possible but be aware that a lot of those (not all) small handy laptops have pretty poor Memory, both RAM and storage, so everything you have may not fit or some heavy processing programs wont work so well.

Sorry Ting, I am going to piggy-back on your thread, cos I am considering doing the same. 

Can I also ask, what's the best way to get rid of my old lap-top?  Will any places in China do part exchange?  And how do I ensure any personal data is well and truly gone?

I second the question about wiping the computer. I'm about to do the same. I'll start a new thread.

As we all know, deleting a file doesn't delete the file, it just deletes the file name from the... um... file handling system?  Anyway, that porn collection, the lesson plans and your bank info are technically all still there on the hard drive.  In due course they will be written over by the... um... file handling system?  But while one is waiting on that, someone with some moderately sophisticated software can still get at your pics.  To totally delete a file, you need a special program that writes blocks of nonsense data over the top of the file.  I believe they are known as "shredders".  (And if you genuinely do have top secret material to erase, the shredder needs to make something like seven passes before the file is completely gone.)

Personally, most times I've left a place, I just reformated the whole hard drive.

Replying to the orginal post, unless you have a lot of stuff, you might be able to get into all onto two or three high capacity USB keys - less in your luggage.

Bear in mind that unless you're a computer expert, any software you installed from a disk will probably have to be installed to your new computer from the disk.