Moving Default VM Folder and moving Virtual Machines

I tried to move my "Default Folder for Virtual Machines" and was very frustrated to find that it didn't work easily, but only after some real head banging and about an hour of experimentation. Is this really the best way to do this? Please say it ain't so. But if it is, maybe some else can benefit from my pain.

Goal: Get my three VM folders out of /Users/{un}/Documents/Parallels, because I want to be able to backup my documents Mac documents without gigabytes of junk from 3 VMs (for XP, Vista, Kubuntu).

Method to move VMs to a new location:
1. Open Parallels, change preferences of "Default Folder for Virtual Machines" to {my home folder}/Parallels/
2. Close Parallels, move VMs to new location.
3. Open Parallels, and it prompts me to create a new VM in the OLD documents folder, which I must do, because if I *cancel* parallels quits immediately, putting me into an endless loop if I try to open parallels again.
4. Move one VM back to old location, then open parallels, open another VM in new location, using Open | Choose.
5. Quit parallels, move all VMs to new location.
6. Start again, and only now will Parallels remember that VMs are in a new location.

Can someone on the parallels team please change the behavior, so that (1) if no VM is found on Parallels start, I have the option of choosing another one before the program quits, or (2) if no VM is found, look in the actual, new "Default Folder for Virtual Machines", rather than remembering the old, now wrong, location? It is very frustrating to move a VM and have the program decide it should quit, rather than give me a chance to pick the new location.

Using Parallels Desktop 3.0 build 5608 on MacOS 10.4.11.

 

When moving VMs to new location.
Please open first time VM using pvs files from new VM folders