I have PD4 for windows and Mac, and a VM on a portable drive. It seems the version of PD on windows is "more current" than the mac version. Question: Can I configure this in such a way that I do not need to reinstall tools whenever I switch OS? ie, even not using tools, or not using SOME of the tools?
Correct answer would be "you can, but it's not a recommended". Parallels Tools package is a part of the product and verified by QA as a part of the product. If you truly want to achieve this, by recommendation would be the following: Parallels Tools are backward compatible. So you can leave "older" version of Parallels Tools in your virtual machine - don't upgrade to the more "recent" one. PD4 for Mac has "older" tools - so i'd recommend to keep them and don't upgrade to PD4 for Win/Lin tools (if you plan to switch between Win-Mac-Lin). Regards, Max