Hi, i'm new to parallels and have a couple of general questions I'm hoping someone can help me with. Background: I've got a mid-2009 13 Macbook Pro (2.26 Core 2 Duo, 8GB RAM, 250 GB Samsung 840 SSD). I'm running Parallels 8 and have installed Windows 7 Professional (64 bit OEM version), MS Office 2013. My goal is to fully transition from my work PC to the Macbook Pro. I've got 3.5GB allocated to the Virtual Machine. I experimented with several mixes of RAM allocation and this seemed to work the best. I'm getting excellent overall response on both the Mac and Windows 7. The only real complaint is: On very large spreadsheets in Excel 2013 (example: a 28 MB file), the scrolling seems to lag just a bit. For example, If I grab the scroll bar and try to drag it down....to scroll quickly down the spreadsheet.....my mouse pointer will move well ahead of the scroll bar (ie which lags behind). My questions are: 1. Is this type of "lagging scroll bar" behavior in Excel typical of running Excel inside Parallels? Or, do you think that I'm running up against the limits of my "old" 2.26 Core 2 duo processor? I'm just trying to figure out if an upgrade a current generation Macbook pro would solve my problems? 2. If I did upgrade to a new Macbook Pro, would Parallels and all of my Windows app's (ie Win 7 Professional, Office 2013) migrate successfully to my new Macbook (ie using setup/migration assistant tools in OSX)? I'm just curious if I'd run into Microsoft "activation" issues on the new Macbook after the migration of Parallels to the new machine. Or, should all of my Microsoft products migrate smoothly and I'd just pick up where I left off without having to worry about Microsoft activation issues. The main reason I ask: My Windows 7 is the 64 bit OEM version. The OEM versions are licensed to a "single" machine. If I get a new Macbook pro that's technically a "different" machine. Or, since Window 7 is installed "inside" Parallels (ie a virtual machine), will I be okay to simply migrate my Windows 7 installation to the new Mac (ie since Windows 7 will still be installed on the same "virtual machine") I'm just not sure how Microsoft's licensing works when your dealing with "virtual" machines vs just installing on a "real" machine directly. Has anyone run into this? Thanks for the help?
