Virtualization not that daunting. I picked up most of the concepts on this board in about a week from kind strangers like Sandeep. Most of the computers nowadays have the muscle it takes to host Virtual Machines. Do what I did when I was learning:
- Install Windows 7 Pro x64 on some kind of multi-core machine with maybe 16GB RAM.
- Buy and install VMWare Workstation (or get the freebie version).
- Build VM's to your heart's content.
Here's a recent thread that covers much of it:
VM