Going Virtual

Virtual machines are a great way to try out new apps without fear of completely hosing your system. I frequently use them both when I do testing, and when I give demonstrations. I use both VMWare and VirtualPC, depending on the scenario I'm working on.

One thing I've found is that Microsoft has several prebuilt virtual machines that show off some of their applications. The Visual Studio 2010 CTP is available as a VM, and there's a complete working TFS system as well.

For demonstration purposes, these are perfect because they're already set up and configured properly. That means you can spend your time on developing a worthwhile presentation for your client, rather than monkeying around with setting a system up.

So before you build a VM, run a quick search on Google to see if there's a pre-built one out there. It can save you lots of time and effort.