Copying data files to new hardware?

I have a large Postgres DB (1100 GB) that I'd like to move to a new
physical machine.  In the past I've done this via pg_dump & restore,
but the DB was much smaller then, and I'm concerned about how long
that would take.  The version of pg currently in use is:

PostgreSQL 8.2.5 on x86_64-redhat-linux-gnu, compiled by GCC gcc (GCC)
4.1.1 20070105 (Red Hat 4.1.1-52)

What I'd like to know is: if I install the latest 8.2.x release - I
see 8.2.18 RPMs are available - can I do a straight copy of the
contents of /var/lib/pgsql/data/ to the new server and start it up?
Or is dump & restore the only real way to do this?

If I have to do a dump & restore I figure I may as well take the
opportunity to migrate to 8.4 or 9.0, but I'd rather just get
everything done as quickly as possible.

Thanks,
Evan