"Hand-picking your folders." ???
If you want to "clone some parts" as you say, then grab the folders you want "cloned" on the laptop and copy them to the drives of the desktops.
You can do this 3 ways:
-Use an external usb device to put the desktop drives in, then plug it into the laptop and copy. If you don't have one already, this costs money.
-Same as above, but put the laptop drive in the usb device and plug into the desktops. Desktop is typically a 3.5in housing, and laptop is 2.5in housing. Still costs money if you don't have a usb housing you can use.
-Set up a share on the laptop, probably pointing to the root of the drives you want to dig in. Make sure they are all on the same LAN, and browse to the share from each desktop. From there copy the folders you want. This is free.
Additional thoughts:
Ghost is not free and pointless for this project.
Files and settings wizard is pretty lame too. It transfers all kinds of crap like internet temp files, malware and that horrendous buildup of system temp files. Maybe you can config it not to do that, not sure, but IMO it's a piece of crap.
Profiles can corrupt over time. When I upgrade peoples' computers, I prefer to simply start fresh and copy common things like docs/pics/music/bookmarks/custom requests and give them a clean slate otherwise. They never complain and always seem happy at how "fast" their computer now feels.
For programs, you can usually install to get the registry entries back in place, then potentially copy over the whole folder from the old install to the new one. I rarely do this, but it can be done. Settings will stay or not, depending on how much the program relies on custom reg entries.
There, that's a start. You should know what to do from here
