notes from the mousepad

How about replicating an installed package list this way:

dpkg --get-selections | grep '[[:space:]]install$’ | awk ‘{print $1}’ > packagelist.txt on the old machine,

then:
sudo apt-get -u install `cat packagelist.txt` on new machine,

That should work. Only disadvantage is that you’d have to download the installed packages from the ‘net onto the new machine, rather than having them available via a CD. The advantage, of course, is that you have burnt one less CD, and will automatically download the most recent version of your packages.