When faced with the very real possibility that my personal Macbook was no longer going to be allowed on the corporate network, Parallels came through in a clutch. In just under an hour I had an entire image of my newly allocated "Productivity PC" running seemlessly on my 13" Core2duo Macbook. All that remained was a memory upgrade so that the virtual machine could have it's own Gig of memory to make XP happy. The only thing that does not appear to be working at this juncture is: IPSEc from the Parallels VM machine through PPTP on OSX over the WiFi interface. What does that mean? When I'm not wired, I can't use VPN for both machines. That's a small price to pay for the upside though. From a software perspective, I am now adhering to all corporate policies regarding updates, scheduled virus scans, etc, but I don't have to lug two laptops around. From a hardware standpoint, I can continue taking advantage of all of the wonderful OSX offerings, and be, well productive. There's drag and drop between machines, a single desktop interface through coherence, and WiFi interface sharing, all available in the most recent Parallels update, but it is the Transporter Agent that truly makes it all worthwhile:
Here's how to image your corporate laptop so that you can start being productive:
(note that I bear no responsibility whatsoever as to your adherence to your own corporate IT policies by following these steps)
1) Download the updated transporter agent to your PC and follow the instructions for installation and running of the transporter agent (http://www.parallels.com/products/desktop/transporter)
2) Plug both boxes in to a FastEthernet LAN
3) From your Macbook, start up the Parallels Transporter.app, and set it to migrate from another computer
a) This migration technique allows you to avoid an IT hardcoded documents folder that might prevent you from creating a local (or mounted) image.
4) Be sure to set the memory to something realistic like 1GB (if you've maxed out your memory)
5) Once the VM machine starts, immediately drop it to the BIOS using F8 and run in safe mode
6) At the login screen, use the Parallels Action bar to send keys (ctrl+alt+del) to login
7) Now, disable all of the services that are machine specific from start -> all programs -> administrative tools -> services
a) I looked for anything that had referenced machine-specific hardware (IBM, Thinkpad...etc)
8) Next, remove unecessary sofware through start -> control panel -> add remove programs
a) Following the same guidelines as step 7, remove softare that may not be happy running on new hardware. Keep in mind if you screw up, the worst thing that happens is that you'll have to start from step 3 again. If you miss something, the VM Machine may crash on normal boot sequence.
9) Restart your Parallels VM and run in normal mode.
10) Parallels tools will now automatically install
11) Once the tools are installed, you can switch to coherence mode to get rid of the unsightly Window desktop and the task bar settings can be changed so that selecting the Parallels VM from the OSX dock will work as the Windows Start button.
That's all there is to it! At this point I haven't had to spoof the MAC adress or worry about strange authentication requirements but I'm confident Parallels will stay one stop ahead and allow users to remain productive. All Hail the Parallels Transporter Agent!
For entertainment, just watch the commercial http://movies.apple.com/movies/us/apple/getamac_ads2/touche_480x376.mov .
