Whats the accepted way of testing IE and other Windows browsers?

I develop web applications on a Mac, so I can test the standard Mac开发者_StackOverflow社区 browsers (Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera, etc). But I'm wondering what is the accepted way for testing Windows browsers and especially IE? How does one test different versions of IE?

Some possible solutions I can think of:

• Dual boot - This seems like a pain if you are developing code in a Mac environment, but want to test in Windows.
• Windows virtual machine - This has always sent my laptop fan haywire and caused general slowness
• Buy a Windows laptop - This certainly works, but is a cost I'm not in the mood to pay for just a test machine.
• Something else I'm missing?

I'm not looking for an absolute right or wrong answer here, I'm just curious what other developers do, and if there's any accepted practice.

Another option, if you can run Virtual PC or have a virtualization application that can use VPC virtual hard drives, is to download the IE Application Compatibility vhds from Microsoft.

Adobe BrowserLab

Easiest way is virtual machines that contain their separate versions of IE since you can not easily have multiple versions of IE running with the update to IE8.

If you want to do automated stuff, you always can use Selenium Web Driver

virtual box looks like a good option... except you need to get a hold of a windows os.

apparently there is also something called winebottler... check out this other post from stack overflow for more details.

Is there a IE tester for mac?

IE tester is a not a bad option, allowing you to switch between different versions of IE at the click-of-a-mouse. It's not perfect, there are a few things it wont mimic exactly, but if you're on a budget it's great (and free). But of course you will need access to a windows box. Beg/borrow/steal one? To be honest, if you're doing a lot of web dev, you should have access to a machine for testing.

The alternative is to use an online rendering service, but that will cost you.