But you have a development sysytem thereI was just accepting what they said ...
yes and no. It can install the files side-by-side. But (without further configuration) you can run only one instance of each server at a time - and you probably only want one instance.Can I install XAMPP with Apache, MySQL, and PHP already installed on my system?
Anyway, the question "xampp yes/no?" really is the question "do I want to bother with the installation and basic configuration of apache,php,mysql etc?". The answer might be "yes" and the reason might be "spent too much time to set it up"
btw: did you make the necessary changes in your php.ini?
call <?php phpinfo(); ?>
What does is say about the parameters
upload_tmp_dir
error_reporting
display_errors
and display_startup_errors ?