I wanted to put Windows XP on my mac so that I could test out sites we build in Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari on PC. I was pretty apprehensive about tainting my mac with an operating system like Winblows – even if it does run in a virtual server. But I digress…

After asking the opinions of several co-workers and doing a bit of searching, I settled on Sun’s VirtualBox software for virtualization. The interface and setup is a bit clunky and not exactly intuitive, but it’s free so who am I to complain? I should note that almost everyone told me to use VMware Fusion because it’s so slick, but I’m cheap and didn’t feel like forking over the $79.

In VirtualBox, I created a new 32 GB partition on my mac and then mounted my Windows XP installation CD. The CD then “booted” when I started the new Virtual Server and the XP installation began. The install went flawlessly, and I had Windows XP running on my mac in a virtual server window in about 45 minutes. The network was even automatically configured so I could reach the Internet in Windows from the time I started.

The only thing I’ve found that I don’t like is that the Virtual Server window is very small, and it causes me to have to scroll around a lot in Internet Explorer. I guess that’s a small price to pay for free virtualization software and easy access to Windows on my mac.