I'm a big advocate of Virtual Machines. I've been using VM's for a number of years, starting with VMwares great offerings back in 2000. The last few years I've used both VMWare and Microsoft Virtual PC and Virtual Server. My friend know that I'm always trying to convince Microsofties to ship trial/beta software as VPC images. I won't say that I'm responsible for this :). I'm sure that pressure from VMWare had more to do with it. But I'm still happy!
In the last year Microsoft has started releasing beta software preconfigured on VHDs(Virtual Hard Drives).
Recently Microsoft announced the same VHD support for more current products.
The VHD Test Drive program is a first for Microsoft software and the more than 7,000 software vendors who can now deliver pre-configured mainstream applications within Windows Server-based virtual machines to their customers. Microsoft partners can now offer their prospective/current customers greater choice during the software evaluation process for mainstream applications and make it easier to evaluate complex solutions through the distribution of pre-configured virtual machines that can run on Virtual Server 2005 R2. You can also use System Center Virtual Machine Manager, now available as a beta, to manage all the virtual machines in your environment.
I think that they'll only be offering trial versions, but that is still a great deal. The best part, at least for me, is that it takes only a few minutes to setup the VHD on my system. Download the file, open VPC manager, add new Virtual PC, use the VHD provided. Done!
Contrast that 3 minute scenario with your scenarios of the past. Have you ever tried to setup an Exchange Server?