Another major update of the Open Source virtualization software after introducing 2.0 in September earlier this year. This tool is my first choice for clean-box testing of various tools, browsers and so on.

Check the changelog (link)
Download here (link)

There is a couple of virtualization products out there. Besides Virtualbox fron SUN (link), we have VMWare (link) that offers the Player and the Server edition for free. These are great tools to run separate OS or separate “virtual” machines as server or clean environments. If you run several of them concurrent a 64bit version of Windows and more memory makes sense.

I also recommend to drop by..
a) the virtual appliances marketplace with tons of pre-build servers and OS (link)
b) JumpBox (link) with a variety of pre-build applications (like BugZilla in a box)

You can save quite some time if you either want to evaluate a product without installing or use without worrying too much about the installation process.

I have a openSolaris, Fedora9 and Windows2003 Server always on standby for testing, as well running a wiki, bugtracking,.. on it.