Finding a test bed

Microsoft finally released Windows Small Business Server 2008 last week and duly made available for download a trial version to try out. So I downloaded it onto my Windows Home Server where I keep all my large downloads (this was over 3Gb for the first DVD image), then burnt it to DVD and looked for a PC to try it on.

My first choice was a large trade-in PC that I'd just cleaned. reconditioned and reloaded Windows XP on. All I had to do was to replace the 160Gb hard disk with another and away we go. Not so. Apparently this system has one of the few Pentium 4 (Northwood) CPUs that aren't 64-bit. Even though it is 3GHz. Loading CPUID confirmed that this was a non-starter as SBS 2008 is only available in 64-bit version.

So I started looking around at my other systems for a suitable test bed:
a) another reconditioned AMD Athlon XP 2600 also not 64-bit.
b) my eMachine Windows test PC already has Windows XP and Windows Vista on it and is only a Pentium 4 2.8GHz.
c) my HP ProLiant server is 64-bit but is already setup as a games system with RAID 0 disk drives and I don't want to mess with it, just sell it.
d) my DELL Inspiron 530 demo and games system is a Core 2 Duo E6550 which would work but it has my new nVidia 9600GSO graphics card, the hard disk drive is fairly full and I don't want to add another. Anyway I'm enjoying Far Cry 2 on this.
e) my daughter's DELL Vostro 200 has a C2D E4500 processor and plenty of space, but she wouldn't appreciate me messing about with it.
f) my DELL PowerEdge SC440 server is running Windows Home Server on it and is the centre of my network so that's out.
g) my old DELL Dimension 4550 with 2.53GHz Pentium 4 is still doing a grand job as my administration computer and is strictly hands off for any new hardware or software.
h) my trusty DELL Inspiron 1300 laptop is also 32-bit and anyway it doesn't seem right to run SBS 2008 on a laptop.

So that's the story so far, I'm keen to try this out but no hardware platform is available at the moment. Maybe it is time I tried this virtualisation technology. If only I could find a system to put it on.