sparc:
Swapping a laptop's hard drive in comparison is too much hassle even for those with the technical know how.
It used to be a pain but now that laptops use SATA drives which have exactly the same data and power connectors as Desktop SATA drives it’s easy. Here’s what I do:
Connect both laptop drives to my desktop PC and temporarily disconnect any desktop SATA drives.
Boot the PC from a Norton Ghost CD and clone the old drive to the new one.
Install the new drive and away you go.
You can possibly use a demo version of Ghost or Acronis to keep the cost down.