Well, the Mac mini is very reasonably priced. As for Debian, just do what I do and take an old laptop to work and run plug it into the network. It may be slow for a server but perfectly good for demonstrating or developing.

Oh, there are plenty of old PCs around that I can install Debian on. In fact, I have. Problem is that I'm not allowed to plug them into the network. :-(

When I first ran a Debian box on the network, we had a problem with DHCP. The Debian box would be given an IP address by the Windows DHCP server OK, but the IP address wasn't reserved, so is was occasionally given out again. Needless to say, this caused problems.

Turns out that Windows DHCP doesn't work properly unless the clients are running NetBIOS. It shouldn't be necessary, so far as I can tell, but it is. (I know next to bugger all about networking, though, I must admit.) As a workaround, I just gave the Debian boxed static, reserved IP addresses, which worked fine. But I was then told that I wasn't allowed to run non-Windows boxes on the network in future.

I think you've answered your own question. Where _I_ work, for instance, it's against company policy to run any browser other than the corporate approved version of Internet Explorer. So how am I supposed to ensure cross browser compatibility?

(To be honest, there's an exception for the QA department... they have a mac or two and a few browsers installed to test cross-browser compatibility for our web applications. Of course, the web DEVELOPERS don't have this.)

Part of the reason COULD be that our internal systems are browser based and they rely on the browser executing javascript as instructed to enforce security rules. Yeah... I know, really stupid design. But that's not the REAL reason for the rule. The real reason is just that the people who write the rules are both stupid and security obsessed. These are the same people who, when the building's heating system broke down and started running full blast during the summer, had to come around and install special locks on the 5th floor windows to prevent us from opening them. They were afraid that we might "drop papers out the window, thus smuggling customers' private information out of the building". (No, they don't check what you're carrying when you walk out.)

Me? I just load a copy of Firefox anyhow, and I don't tell anyone. I had been planning to accidentally break a window, but my friends talked me out of it.

I'm an occasional poster in your blog, but I think for this post I'd better encrypt my name with an unbreakable cipher.

-- Zvpunry Purezfvqr

I'll keep your IP address to myself then, Zvpunry. You get some cool stuff in the encodings module, don't you? And you don't even need to import it here. ;-)

Sad, but true. You *can't* do cross-platform testing, 'cos you work for fuckwits. Not your fault. Just formally raise it as a quality issue, and move on.

My lot aren't fuckwits - they did wait until there was a problem before coming down on me. But to my mind, there is a real lack of vision in sticking exclusively to Windows, especially since the problem was arguably caused by Windows, not Debian. (You can argue it either way: it was Windows' fault, 'cos it doesn't implement DHCP properly; it was Debian's fault, 'cos if I had stick to Windows, there wouldn't have been a problem.)