Being in the lucky position that I find myself in at my place of employment, where because we have Microsoft sponsorship [which basically means we have a huge amount of the latest Microsoft products at our disposal - and ALL for FREE] you may wonder why I would ever go looking for an open source alternative. Well, there are several reasons actually, but without digressing too far from the main point here, sometimes open source is simply thrust upon you. And anyway, I am a big fan of open source. Take the example of VirtualBox. I use more virtual servers than physical these days and the thing is, once you start using virtual systems, you really do wonder how you ever coped without. They are quicker [when configured correctly] and they are so easy to backup and to restore in times of disaster. I use Virtual PC 2007 for many of my personal experiments and this allows me to use whatever operating system I need without the need for extra hardware, and I use Virtual Server 2005 for some of the more demanding tasks which require server capability. Both of these products are free and readily available - a fact that ...