Using the free VMPlayer you can run a virtual environment on your PC. There are of course other virtual PC systems but the great thing about this one is you can download pre-built systems and run them right away. Very Cool.
Read Books for Free Using Google
Steve Rubel explains on his blog how to access and read some books on-line using a using Google Book Search. he deatils how to read O’Reilly’s Hacks Books, but it does work for many others.