Put simply the IE6 VPC is nice - very much “appliance style“, fire it up, and start using it to test your websites, until April next year when it expires. 

….and I’m very cool with that.  I imagine [the different product teams at] Microsoft are just starting to take their first steps into distributing pre-configured OSs as VMs and I think they have done a stellar job so far!  Personally I reckon things will get better and better from here.  Kudos to the IE team for getting it out there and making it available.

Some general points I noticed with the IE6 VPC:

  • Grab that 495Mb VPC Image from Microsoft Downloads - You’ll need to go through WGA
  • The installer/extractor is different from the TestDrive images, supports the /Q/T/C switches - but just works
  • The extracted VHD ifs 1.4 Gb
  • There is no VMC, so you have to create you own?   This I thought is odd
  • The VHD isn’t Sysprepped, so it just roars to life
  • It has a very nice swishy wallpaper
  • Check you regional settings, default is as always US time :)
  • You can go to and use windows update
  • Virtual Machine additions 13.724 are installed - this build is higher than versions in vhd test drive
  • IE6 has a bunch of genuinely useful tools to download and run.

I found it odd that you had to create your own VMC?  I imagine there are a bunch of reasons why eula/licensing/networking/etc - but I’m only guessing.  Off topic, I really liked the stylish wallpaper:

IE6 VPC

Anyway that’s pretty much it.  One last thing though, I did notice this in the EULA:  “You may not change or convert the virtual hard disk image from the VHD format.“  So I’m not sure how that affects people out there using the VMware freebies.  

I might jam off an e-mail and ask.  Keep you posted.