Sorry if these are lame question but: Have an iMac with XP (retail) in Parallels VM and just got a MacBook to run alongside (but portable)! I can migrate Home Folder, settings etc but how do I stand on VM? From what I can gather I need to purchase a 2nd copy of Parallels and set up a new copy of XP from scratch - is that right? There is no way to migrate (legally) my VM across or to sync them! Also if I have buy an OEM version of XP for the MacBook would there be any licence issue if clone it (back-up)?
If you purchase a second Parallels key and install Parallels on the second machine, you can copy the VM (the whole folder) to the second machine and it will work fine. The XP license issue is a legal, not a technical issue, and I'm not a lawyer.
If you buy XP to run in a VM, then from what I understand it can run in any VM, on any machine. The catch is that only one VM can actually be running at a time. Check the license though, because I could be wrong. Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer.
Is a bit of a gray area! I know Parallels advise when it comes to XP on Boot Camp and VM on the same machine is a definite maybe!?! A plea bargain to Microsoft! But the same VM on different machines? I guess to sleep well I need a second Windows licence and copy 'My Documents' across. I do believe virtualization and disk images is the future for computers - perhaps MS will lose out in the long run.
XP, Vista Licensing As far as Windows XP goes, XP is licensed to a particular machine, not a person according to some interpretations of the EULA. Technically it looks like one VM, one license. It looks like Microsoft is coming down on running Vista in VMs. According to the new EULA, you cannot install Vista in a virtual machine, unless you have a Business or Volume license (or Enterprise). At all. Check out the article, it is a good read if you're into licensing. http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/winvista_licensing.asp
Wow! Thankyou very unambiguous article and very sympathetic to MS licensing rationale (which as we know is about monopoly). As you noted above Vista is restricted to the expensive licences for virtualisation and XP is one machine at a time (and slightly ambiguous here as to a maximum of two machines). This hurts Parallels future personal-use market! Just a note - my Mac just had a logic board replaced and my XPVM was fine but it would appear from the article that Vista would detect such a change as a new install (although that would be a version which the article says is not allowed for virtualisation use anyway).
