Microsoft shows how to have IE6 and IE7 on the same machine
One thing web developers have to do is test their work on multiple web browsers to ensure the site looks and acts consistently regardless of the browser used (this is because different browsers do the same thing in different ways, if at all). This is a problem with Internet Explorer for Windows, as you can (officially) only have one version of IE on a single machine. Apparently, trying to install multiple versions (5.0, 5.5, etc) can be problematic.
The best solution seems to be virtualization, where you run one operating system within another. This is done using products such as VMWare and VirtualPC. The IE team, of the IEBlog, have released a time-limited virtual PC image for Virtual PC. It has Windows XP Professional, with all the latest updates, and with IE6 installed. Because Virtual PC is now free, it costs nothing, except a decent hardware setup, to run another copy of Windows within Windows!
The other nice thing is this saves having to have another valid Windows license, as the image is pre-activated, and ready to go. One possible downside is the time limit - supposedly the VPC image will stop working on April 1, 2007. I imagine this is to prevent people from using those images indefinitely. I hope that means the IE Team will be regularly providing newer versions, with more future expiry dates, so we can keep making use of this offer.
This is a great thing for the IE Team to do, as only having one version of IE installed can make complete testing difficult. You can easily run multiple versions of Windows, with different versions of IE, and (more) easily get your testing done.
I can’t wait to try it! Way to go, IE Team!