Should I purchase for website testing? Need different versions of Windows.

M

MarieA

Bit poster
Hello,
I have a late 2008 MBP 2.66 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo w/ 4 GB 1067 MHz DDR3 running Lion 10.7.2 (also have a 2008 iMac with slightly similar specs, but not quite as good, haven't yet upgraded that one to Lion).

I do a lot of website design and development and would like to be able to test site performance on difference versions of IE. Unfortunately, many online tools I've found (and my current solution of Adobe BrowserLabs) just provide screen shots rather than allowing you to interact with the browser.

Microsoft provides older versions of their browsers that run on Virtual PC, but I don't think that's something that is compatible with Mac (don't know for sure yet). Anyway, you can download their browsers if you have Windows running, so I was looking at Parallels as an option.

Problem is: IE6 requires XP (not too concerned about IE at this stage); IE7 requires Vista; IE8 and 9 require Windows 7. I've tried to locate documentation on the Parallels website about whether I can have multiple versions of Windows running, or how best to go about this issue. Maybe getting Parallels and then installing Virtual PC, as MS provides VPC images of their browsers:http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=11575 without having to have the OS, as far as I can tell.

Has anyone used Parallels for this purpose, and if so, what were the results? I can't find a sales email address for Parallels, so thus far, I'm not too impressed.

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.
 
You are a bit misguided. Let me clarify.

1. Those VPC images are preinstalled virtual machines.
2. Those VPC images actually include the OS (Windows), they have an expiration date, but you can reinstall them.
3. You can convert them to Parallels by importing them: http://download.parallels.com/deskt...n_US/Parallels Desktop User's Guide/32732.htm
4. You can have multiple VMs with multiple Windows versions. Provided you have a license for each.
5. Those VPC images don't require you purchase a license.
6. You can't run Virtual PC inside a VM, in other words, you can't run a Virtual machine inside another virtual machine.
 
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Thanks, Specimen.
Unfortunately, being out of the Windows world for quite awhile, anything Windows confuses me!

So, if I understand, Parellels is basically acting like MS's Virtual PC, e.g., a Virtual Machine (VM)?

If I had a license for Windows 7 and Windows Vista, I could run two versions of Parallels, one with each version of Windows, and then install the respective IE versions I'd need, or convert the VPC images I needed into Parellels and install them onto each version of Parallels?

Would I need to purchase two copies of Parellels to accomplish this?

I really apologize for sounding like a complete idiot. I haven't really considered putting Windows on my Mac before, and it seems like there are a lot of options out there, and with the complication of needing different versions of Windows to get multiple versions of IE, I'm in a state of confusion.

I appreciate your help, thoughts, and guidance.

Best,
Marie
 
Parallels and Virtual PC (and VMWare Fusion, and VirtualBox) are not virtual machines, they are apps/programs that allow you to create and run virtual machines.

So you don't run two versions of Parallels, you run two virtual machines in/under Parallels.

So, obviously, you only need one copy of Parallels.


You're looking at this the wrong way.

Simply...
Get Parallels Desktop for Mac 7 trial.
Download the VPC images you need.
Import each via File>Open> pick .vmc file.
Install Parallels Tools on them.

If it works for you buy Parallels.
 
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