We all have used at least one piece of trial software that ended after a certain amount of time or a certain date. With virtualization, you can now run some of these applications (or systems) within a virtual environment pretty much forever. When it expires, reload the original snapshot of the software.

Example:

You have a utility similar to PKZip. You will create a bare virtual system with that as the main program. Then make a snapshot or backup the virtual machine.

When the software expires, reload the snapshot or backup.

** Note ** Some virtualization add-ons like VMware Tools can synchronization the time between the host and the guest. Normally this is a good thing. For the purpose of this exercise, do not install these tools. Please do install the necessary tools to optimize the Virtual Machine -- just skip the time synchronization options.

** If you really like the software, please do pay for it!