What's the best way to clone a computer? From notebook to netbook.

A friend asked me to help configure his new Asus netbook.
His former notebook has got a broken screen and that’s why he’s moving to the new netbook.
I have heard of solutions to make a dump of the old computer to a file and restore it to the new machine, preserving all system configurations, etc. and reconfiguring the base-level system files to adapt to the different motherboard, etc etc.
What do you recommend?

Many thanks!