Easiest way to move my installation to my new laptop ? Cloning the drive ?

[linuxguy]

My laptop has quit.   I am getting a new one.   My old laptop has a 32
bit Intel processor.   My new laptop has a dual 64 bit AMD processor, as
well as different peripherals.

What is the easiest way to move my current installation to the new
machine ?

Is there a way to clone the current hard drive to the new hard drive and
then force an update to all the hardware dependent files ? (ie kernel,
etc ?)

Thanks