[thelist] Switching back to Mac

[Chris George]

> It's much easier to use a PC to view mulitple copies of IE. I 
> primarily use Macs but I have one test PC with an XP 
> partition containing every major version of IE. They are only 
> a few Mb's each.
> 
> http://www.skyzyx.com/downloads/
> 
> These work fine to preview a webpage design -which is the 
> whole point- but will crash if you do much else. Here is the 
> explanation of how it is done.

What do you mean by "preview"? Do you mean open a static web site, look
at it, and close it? Or do you mean proper, practical QA testing all
available pages, media elements and input areas?

Because it seems to me that an unstable platform for testing isn't
exactly an accurate representation of how it needs to perform in
reality.

> 
> http://labs.insert-title.com/labs/article.aspx?ID=795
> 
> I'm guessing these would also run under Virtual PC, saving a 
> bunch of disk space, but VPC runs like a tortoise. $500 spent 
> on a low end PC is a far better investment imo.

VPC may be slower, but at least it's stable. And more flexible too - I
could install WFW 3.1.1 in 45 minutes in VPC, if I needed to in a pinch
(theoretical example, of course <shudder>).

I'm not convinced that $500 (or less, these days) on a 'cheap' PC is a
better "investment" than some more ram and VPC. Taking into account now
you have 2 machines to maintain, upgrade, troubleshoot and otherwise
care for you have now spread your overhead, operating budget and a far
worse evil: *time* much too thinly.

VPC is convenient, stable, and much more affordable in the _long_run_
than a separate computer. As an example (in the small business
environment), we have other fully functional Dell workstations here that
aren't being used. However, to minimize IT costs, general flakiness and
time invested we are making use of VPC running WinMe, 98, 2000, NT and
another XP setup in order to test. No KVM switches or separate
workstations or other weird, cobbled together solutions.

Anyway. Just a bit of opinion and a real world example.

Hope that helps.

Chris.