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Mcdevidr

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Nov 27, 2013
793
368
As I am new to Mac i am not 100% certain how many things on the platform work. I bought a mac mini i5 then sold that and bought an i7 model. I am now trying to sell my i7 model and some other Bose things I have lying around to upgrade to an iMac. The i7 came with parallels from BH Photo and I am wondering will I have any issues restoring from time machine and just using the software on the iMac or will I need to repurchase the software?
 

Honza1

macrumors 6502a
Nov 30, 2013
933
433
US
As I am new to Mac i am not 100% certain how many things on the platform work. I bought a mac mini i5 then sold that and bought an i7 model. I am now trying to sell my i7 model and some other Bose things I have lying around to upgrade to an iMac. The i7 came with parallels from BH Photo and I am wondering will I have any issues restoring from time machine and just using the software on the iMac or will I need to repurchase the software?

The question is bit confusing, so here is the rundown of various options...
1. If you restore (using Migration assistant on New Mac) from time machine on new computer, most of your Mac applications should work without need to insert again your keys or registration. Have done that. Miracles of time machine. Some programs may detect system change and request unlock again, Parallels is the one which, I think, will do that. Do not remember.
Note: Apps linked to App store will need you to authorize that new computer for your iTunes account. That is effectively "moving the licenses". When you sell your old computer, deauthorize it so new owner does not use your licenses. And delete your account...
2. As long as you have your key for Parallels (they are NOT sold on App store), you can license them on your new computer. As far as I can say, they do not test the key against web server and keep track of multiple installations.
3. If you copy/move the Parallels VM (virtual machine) from one computer to another, that works just fine. I have seen some issues some time ago, when the copy did not go as well as expected, but in principal you can copy/move the VM from disk to disk, machine to machine and it should work. Backup is _VERY_ important.
4. Any Windows applications within the Parallels VM will run as before with no need to license again. They will not even figure out they moved to different hardware. Even Windows should not figure this out, at least I have not seen that ever happening.

FYI: I have moved about 4 times over they years to different computer and may be 8x to different drive (upgrades)... Had one case when VM did not move correctly and I needed to delete it and move second time, so be careful.
 
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