A Twist on Running IE6 and IE7 on a Single Machine

I just finished reading an article on the IEBlog titled, “IE6 and IE7 Running on a Single Machine.” Now here’s a fascinating twist on how to run both browsers on the same machine. This isn’t the usual way to accomplish it. Instead, they trot out the “virtualization” method (again). But with a twist:

How about a free XP license with that virtualization?

Yep, you read that right. To make our lives easier, Microsoft has released a virtual machine image complete with an activated XP SP2 license and IE6. Oh, and there’s a free download for Virtual PC 2004 to run it. This is incredible.

Now, here’s a twist… suppose you already use VMware instead of Virtual PC? (free VMware Player) And you don’t run windows, but want to test IE6 against your web site? One option might be to grab the VMware Converter beta and convert the Virtual PC image to the VMware Player format. Granted, someone would want to read the licenses first. Oh!  Does VMware Player run on Macs?

All pondering aside, I think this is an awesome offering from Microsoft. Everything you need, free, to be able to regression test web sites and apps with IE6. I can actually update my work machine now — I’ve been holding it back to IE6 and testing stuff at home with IE7 just to make sure all is good. I just don’t see corporate users rushing to upgrade to IE7, ya know?

Possibly Related posts:

1. Virtual Conversion Virtually Ugly
2. VMware Fusion 2 Beta
3. IE7 Release Candidate 1
4. IE7 Standalone
5. More On IE7 Release