Complicated install question?

D

dcnicholls

Bit poster
1. I have a paid for and registered copy of Parallels 3 which I never installed
2. I subsequently used VM Fusion 2 and have a current install on my other Macbook Pro
3. I have just upgraded by this MBP to Snow Leopard, and a bit of Googling suggests Parallels 5 is a better choice than Fusion 3
4. I am downloading a trial version of Parallels 5 to see how it goes, before buying the upgrade from the uninstalled P3

Question: Can I import my VMWare Windows XP virtual machine into P5 on this MBP from the other MBP? Or would it be better to do a complete fresh install (tedious).

Thanks. DN
 
To answer my own question: transferring the VMWare vm is almost trivially easy:

Connect both machines to the LAN and make sure you can log into the source machine from the target machine
The source machine should not have VMWare running
install Parallels 5 (demo in my case) on the target machine
Tell it to import a virtual machine
Navigate to the other Mac via the LAN
Navigate to the vmx file (highlighted by Parallels)
Click OK
Wait while it downloads the vm and converts it.
Bingo!

And, Holy Flying Spaghetti Monster, does that baby fly!! It is perhaps 5 to 10 times faster running Windows XP apps than VMWare Fusion 2 on Leopard. Absolutely stunning. MS Office 2007 was exceedingly sluggish on Fusion 2/Leopard, and I've never seen it run so fast on P5. Excel and Word open in the blink of an eye.

Time to buy the upgrade licence!
 
I'd say yes you can - the VM's are not tied to Parallels as a program. That means I could even send you my VM and you could run it.
 
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