CMS: Try Before You Install

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There are dozens of Content Management Systems (CMS) on the market today, ranging in price from US$200,000-250,000 for Enterprise systems — Vignette , Documentum and Interwoven — to no cost for open-source systems — PHP-Nuke, Zope and pMachine.
The more expensive systems are often priced with installation, configuration and some sort of management, but the open-source systems — which may be just as difficult to install and configure properly — vary widely in the availability and quality of documentation and support. Installing one of these systems for a test-drive is often so daunting that it is not even attempted.
Enter opensourceCMS, a place where you can experiment with many of the open-source CMS systems without having to bother installing them. Each hour, on the hour, the installations are wiped and re-installed. During the hour, any registered user is able to take control of one of the installed systems to put it through its paces.
As the creators of opensourceCMS say:

The idea behind creating opensourceCMS revolved around the need to have a place where one could completely test content management systems in one place, before taking the time to install one. No one wants to install a CMS only to find it lacked key features or functions you need. Also, you may find a CMS you didn’t know about and realize it was exactly what you needed.

This is a terrific idea and I’d love to see it expanded to some of the other types of open-source software available. opensourceCMS is making a start in this direction by offering, in addition to CMS systems, blogging software, e-commerce, groupware and even several e-Learning management packages, such as Moodle.