In my line of work, I’m constantly demonstrating SharePoint functionality to people. Having a good working virtual machine is critical to make that happen (and I have several ). However, if you don’t want to create one from scratch, you can go ahead and download the virtual machine (vhd) that Microsoft put on their site right here:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=751fa0d1-356c-4002-9c60-d539896c66ce&displaylang=en

This machine is kind of hard to search for on the net. The page that it resides on is labeled “2010 Information Worker Demonstration and Evaluation Virtual Machine (RTM)”. You can search for that or click on the link above. Your choice.

Don’t forget the fact that you need a 64-bit platform to run this machine. Also, this machine Has to be run in a Hyper-v environment. I had blogged about the requirements earlier so check that post out first (http://blog.sharepointelearning.com/want-to-get-your-hands-on-sharepoint-2010/) before getting started. Good Luck!