virtualization

[John G. Heim]

Anybody have any experience with the various virtualization options out 
there? My department runs VMWare but I don't want to pay $200 for a VMWare 
Workstation license for my personal machine if its not going to be 
accessible or if there is something better that is open source.  I want to 
create a bunch of Windows virtual machines to learn a little something about 
Windows networking. I figured I'd use VMWare to learn a little about that at 
the same time. But I don't want to get bogged down with the virtualization 
stuff.

Also, does anybody know if VMWare esxi is really free? Its free for 
download, I know that. And I know you can download a 60 day evaluation 
version. But it looks like you can download older versions for free. Its 
hard to tell because the VMWare web site isn't real clear. I'm guessing 
that's deliberate. I don't want to wipe out my linux install only to find 
that esxi is going to stop working in 60 days.