Microsoft has these “virtual labs” where you are supposed to be able to get hands on with some of their products w/o all the pain of downloading and installing them.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/virtuallabs/

Right now I can’t the site to respond, but I am guessing it is a temp problem, not that they have removed this service.

Some of the labs they have are:

ASP.NET 2.0

ASP.NET

BizTalk Server

Commerce Server

Connected Systems

Data Access and Storage

Internet Information Services (IIS)

JPlusN (J+N)

Microsoft Expression

.NET Framework 3.0

Office

Security

Smart Client

Soup to Nuts

SQL Server 2005

SQL Server 2005 Upgrade

TechNet Virtual Labs

Visual Basic

Visual C#

Visual C++

Visual J#

Visual SourceSafe

Visual Studio .NET 2003

Visual Studio 2005

Visual Studio Team System

Web Services

Windows Embedded CE 6.0

Windows Mobile

Windows Vista

Windows XP Embedded

 

 

Thanks to Somasegar for the links.