Using a Parallels VM between 2 Macs

I use Parallels mainly for Quickbooks and a couple of other PC only apps. Sometimes I need to do this on my Mac at work and sometimes on my 2nd Mac at home. Ideally, I'd like to just transfer the whole VM between Macs so that the whole Windows install is mirrored but is that going to cause Activation problems when I launch Windows on the 2nd Mac? I have 2 copies of Windows but that won't help as Windows will see it as me running 1 copy on 2 Macs if it's tied to hardware. Am I going to have to just copy any files I want to work on and keep 2 separate Windows installations? Anybody got a good workflow for this, I'm sure it's a common problem?

 

RichG,

That is going to cause problems with activation. You will have to get a separate installation of Windows for each machine, in order to comply with legal requirements.

But you can use synchronization utilities, like Dropbox, to keep Quickbooks files up-to-date on both computers.

 

Thought so, I have 2 licences but I'd rather just maintain one installation. My Mac lets me clone the whole installation onto a portable drive and update the Mac at home so that everything is mirrored. Means I don't get any nasty shocks when I start work at home and realise I forgot to copy over that small but crucial file I installed at work.

I have Dropbox on Mac, that's a good idea as I can install that on my Windows VM too. Thanks for the reply.

 

Theoretically, though of course not legally, wouldn't the Windows activation base itself on the 'virtual hardware', ie virtual mb, virtual CPU, virtual HDD, which would presumably be the same on the two copies of the installation?
Salamat

 

Salamat,

The CPU would still be different on different machines.
After some checking, I found out that there is a way of legally running the same virtual machine on two different Macs. You would have to have all the virtual machine files on a removable USB device and connect it to the Mac you are wanting to run it from. Of course, you have to have Parallels Desktop installed on both of them.