Cloning/Migrating from PC to Parallels in a Mac -- how hard is it?

Hi,

Before I plunk down the money on Parallels for the Mac, I need to ask the question about the difficulty in getting my OS and files off the PC to the Mac.

I have a Dell with XP (service pack 2), and a bunch of apps which I don't want to install again; plus files.

Do I have to use some utility to do a clone and then Parallels will take over and migrate me over, or what?

If somebody can either give me a blow-by-blow description of this process, degree of difficulty, and whether or not other applications other than Parallels are necessary -- or give me a link to where I can find all this info -- I'd be grateful.

Thanks for any help you can offer.

 

Parallels has a utility that comes included with initial purchase called Transporter. Do some reading up on this, the manuals are online at parallels. It is supposed to take your windows setup on your pc, and turn it into a virtual windows drive, which basically is the entire windows+applications all in one large file. This virtual drive file ends up on your mac, and when you start parallels it finds this virtual drive and launches it.

There is a catch. You must have a certain version of windows for this to work. This is a little complicated, but certain pc vendors like Dell and HP sell you a pc with windows already installed. That particular copy of windows can't be installed on another machine: it knows your pc by serial number and if installed on another machine, will not operate properly.

See if you can find this document via google: "Everything you always wanted to know about Windows Product Activation", Published February 28, 2005 by Ed Bott. It explains this little snafu from microsoft.

I tired to use parallels transporter to take my HP windows setup and transport it to my new Mac, but ran into this problem. If you have an actual Windows Install Disk (not a recovery disk), you have a portable version of windows. If all you got with your Dell is a Windows Recovery disk, you may be stuck.

Transporter also needs a lot of free space on your original pc to make this virtual drive. A lot of free space. It basically duplicates your windows hard disk on your windows hard disk, so if your's is full, there's another problem.

I had to give up on transporter because I could'nt free up enough space on my pc and because I didn't have a portable version of windows (I had an HP pavilion). I had to purchase another XP license and reinstall my applications inside of parallels. It wasn't too bad, and I've never regretted doing it. It runs better/faster than my HP ever did. I use my parallels version of windows every day, making bucks, and I don't have to wait for HP/Microsoft to release control of my computer when I need to use it.

mj