I've got a headache just pondering this. (well it's 12:45 AM, the Avs lost, and there was plenty of beer consumed..)

Anyway, I'm superficially interested in this as we don't do much testing...*grumble*

The OS/MSIE divide also simplifies. First, we can probably focus largely on 98 and 2K. The DOS-based OSs are largely MSIE 3, 4, 5.0. If I understand correctly, 2K and XP are MSIE 5.5 & 6.0 only, but I'm probably wrong. Please correct me.

2K shipped with 5.01 originally, XP ships with 6.0. I beleive 6.0 runs on 98, not sure about 95. I think if you focus on 98/ME IE 4.0+ and 2K/XP IE 5.0+ you should be covering most of what's out there. 3.1[1], 95 and IE 3.0 are probably all but gone.

AOL throws in another curve by adding its own browser to the mix, which means you can probably ignore the other browsers on the system (yes, no?).

Yes, AOL operates independent of the browser on the machine. AOL's browser is IE based..but quirky from what I understand. IANAAU (AOL User) but my mom is and I'm frequently at her desk making it work again for her...

Anyone else out there trying similar?

Not at this time.

This is sad, really. HTML is supposed to be a standard...but I'm too tired to rant about that now.

Seems to me this could be a service offered: "Test your web designs on all platforms.."

Question: What about *nix? MacOS? Mozilla? Opera?

Interested to see how this one pans out. :-)