Microsoft Developer Licenses

Can anyone enlighten me as to Microsoft's licensing set up for developers?

I work off a Mac, since my laptop running WinXP was stolen. I now have Parallels installed, so I can run WinXP/Vista in a VM.

All I want to do is check web sites in IE6 (standalone) and IE7, and also check HTML emails in Outlook 2003, 2007.

I'm reticent to pay top wack for the various licenses. In my days working in big business, there were always full MSDN subscriptions about.

Is there a similar, more affordable, solution for the freelance developers?