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Our company is the same way. There are one or two legacy applications (nothing I wrote, mind you, third party stuff) that require IE6. They won't work with IE7, IE8, or FireFox. So we're waiting on the vendors before we can upgrade IE. I'm thinking of recommending that we upgrade to IE7 or IE8, however, and set up those people that need IE6 with Xenocode's IE6 sandbox ( http://www.xenocode.com/browsers/ ).

Have you tried Xenocode's Web Browser Sandbox ( http://www.xenocode.com/browsers/ )? It's been a godsend for me since I don't need to boot up two different VMs just to test pages in IE6, IE7, and IE8. I just load the appropriate browser sandbox app and the browser looks and feels like it's really installed on my system.

Ours has too, unfortunately. One of our web apps (*not* one I designed, mind you, a third party tool) doesn't support IE7/8 or FireFox. So we're stuck with IE6 until the vendor upgrades. I might ask today what the timeline on that upgrade is (if there even is one). Since it is a tool that I think relatively few people use, perhaps we can use Xenocode's Browser Sandbox ( http://www.xenocode.com/browsers/ ) for the users who need the IE6-only tool.

(Yes, I prefer FireFox over IE, but IE7 or IE8 would still be a vast improvement over IE6!)

...IE6 and 7 will probably break. I don't test in them any more. How would I? All of the computers have been upgraded to IE8.

If there's the faintest possibility of you changing your mind and wanting to test in IE7 at least, check out Xenocode browser sandboxes.

I'm in a similar situation. Our employees are stuck with IE6 because some internal app (not one I built!) won't support over IE6 (and definitely doesn't support Firefox). So I need IE6 to test internal pages. However, our external website is being browsed on by users with IE6, IE7, and Firefox. Firefox is no problem, that's my main browser anyway. But how do I upgrade to IE7 while still allowing myself the ability to see pages in IE6? Virtual machines are nice, but require me to "boot" a Windows instance just to test one page.

Luckily, I found Xenocode's tool: http://www.xenocode.com/browsers/ Their program loads a virtual instance of the browser so now I'm running IE6 (native), Firefox (native), IE7 (virtual), and IE8 (virtual). I can have all of my windows open at once and cycle through the browser versions as I make changes to the pages. It's a lifesaver (and free to boot).

Some users can't upgrade. In my company, we're still using IE6. Not my decision, mind you. As the web master, I'd love to see us move to IE7/8 or (better) Firefox. Unfortunately, we rely on a web-based system that doesn't play well with IE7/8 or Firefox. So until the vendor upgrades their browser support, we're stuck. I'm lucky enough to have rights to install Firefox and use http://www.xenocode.com/browsers/ to run IE7 and IE8 for testing purposes, but 99% of our users are forced to use IE6.

Disable iexplore.exe and install it in a sandbox: xenocode

My company falls in the "outdated intranet software" category. Some software that is critical for us to run won't work with IE7 or IE8. So our users are stuck with IE6. Since they're using IE6, I'm forced to remain on IE6 to test out our Intranet (different intranet site, this one I designed with IE6/7/8 & FF compatibility) on IE6. However, my problem is that I still need to test out our public website on IE7 and IE8 (which outside users use). Thank goodness for http://www.xenocode.com/browsers/ . It lets me run IE7 and IE8 while still having IE6 on my computer.

I prefer to use Xenocode's Browser appliances. With them I can compare IE6, IE7, and IE8. They also have FireFox, Safari, and Google Chrome. (I don't use these though. I have FireFox installed and the others have too small market share to really spend time testing against.)

http://www.xenocode.com/browsers/

It so happens that Windows Vista isn't fully compatible with the game -- .net SP3 borks the authentication system. Its dev promptly looked for the problem, and of course the problem was found in the third-party obfuscation tool. He submitted a ticket and the community is waiting for a fix.

It's been 40+ days since this issue has been found, targeted and reported, but Nothing Happens(TM). We're still waiting for the fix. The admins do not obviously want to release a non-obfuscated version of the .net authentication tool, nor they want to switch over another obfuscation company (and pay for another license). So people using Vista are currently forced to work around the problem by blocking updates and using .net uninstallers.

Even Microsoft Research has contacted us with details regarding the trouble, but again there is nothing we can do to address it.

Our community is having a 40+ days [partial] downtime, and there's nothing we can do, but wait and publish workarounds for a problem we didn't create.

Not the kind of stuff that makes you all warm and fuzzy on relying on third parties, huh?

Thinstall (http://www.thinstall.com)
Xenocode (http://www.xenocode.com)
Sandboxie (http://www.sandboxie.com)

Thinstall (http://www.thinstall.com)
Xenocode (http://www.xenocode.com)
Sandboxie (http://www.sandboxie.com)