LASR Classic has been a staple in the dryfire software application in the 2A community for almost 10 years. Originally launched as a Windows application, it enjoys a wide base of users ranging from competitive shooters, instructors, folks who EDC, and firearms professionals (LEO, Military, and first responders). It's not surprising that we regularly receive calls asking if LASR Classic can work on their Mac, either because they have to switch platforms or they are a new user who wants to improve their training with dryfire.
Although the original creators built LASR Classic to run on Microsoft's Windows, technology has changed and evolved so that you can now easily enjoy and train on the same platform on your Mac.
If you do a Duck-Duck-Go search, you'll see a few virtual machine software options for a Mac. However, from my experience and what I have read, the easiest one to use and the most easy to deploy is Parallels.
They have a free 14-day trial to kick the tires. Once the trial is done, the annual subscription is typically $99 or $129 one-time purchase for the Standard edition. However, they have discounts for Educators & Students, Military, Government, and non-profit. You can (click here) for our affiliate link).
Parallels 18 is the latest version that will run on Intel and M1/M2 Apple Silicon chips. The difference comes in in the Windows version you will run. Intel Mac CPUs can run the same version of Windows that you have on a PC (x86), but the newer version M1/M2 CPUs need Windows on ARM (Advanced RISC [Reduced Instruction Set Computing] Machine).
That said, with VM ware, you can run other OS and not just Windows in one computer (see the list here), so that's a bonus if you're an IT/tech geek like myself but also like to run different platforms (not me).
How simple is it to put Windows 11 on your Mac? Watch this video here. Parallels made it so simple that it is click on the icon and follow the prompts.
9to5Mac covers installation and more in his (20:16) video entitled How to install Windows 11 on M1/M2 Macs using Parallels 18.
Once Windows is installed, then it's time to make sure you have all the latest updates that Windows has pushed, and then install LASR Classic. If it's been a while since you put away LASR Classic because you switched to a Mac, and now you don't know your license key check, you can try to recover the license using the steps in the video entitled "Victim of Piracy" which I'll include below.
Before we talk about the LASR Classic portion of the installation, we'll go over the other VM ware program called Fusion, made by VMWare. It's the first one I tried on the Mac Mini M2 I bought on July 3rd. Since then, VMWare has made the process even simpler--not quite as simple as Parallels, but it's getting close.
Here's what we talked about in this post.
Also, when you're ready, here are a few ways we can help--
Join our free community on Facebook at (The LASR Nation)
Ultimately you prove your all dry fire practice with live fire. You can check ammo prices here.
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