Hello, can someone please help me to locate the place to post this topic? I am blown away by how amazing VMWare has organized their discussion forums. There are so many products - so much to choose from!

I was just interested to try to find out if I (little me) can do desktop virtualization.

I just have a laptop, and I would love it if I could start from the beginning. I am about to wipe my hard drive clean and re-install everything - after backing up everything I hold dear.

I have always been a Windows guy... but it would be awesome to Install VMWare first - before anything else, to be able to toggle between op systems.

Where do I get started reading on this? Right now I guess I'm just a "gee whiz" guy.

I have seen VMWare in full action in a corporate environment, and I understand how you can take a "snapshot" of  an op system to be played back later.

I guess I'm just asking if you can install VMWare first - before anything else - and then on top of that build any op sytem you want that is compatible with your hardware?

How much does that cost for the "little guy"?

The reason I am asking is because I am a programmer for something called Ariba (J2EE Procure to Pay). I would like to be able to set up a whole environment and give it to other developers. I would also like to play with this idea on my own, such as playing with Linux for my first time.

Any ideas? Thanks!