If you are considering using Magento Commerce Community Edition as your Shopping Cart software choice, here are four options to quickly get a closer look at the web application.

1. Test Magento Live Online
   The Magento.com website allows you to get a full look at both the consumer side and the merchant administrator side of the Magento Commerce software.  See the links below:

   Consumer View
   http://www.magentocommerce.com/demo

   Merchant / Admin View
   http://demo-admin.magentocommerce.com/index.php/admin/

2. Test Magento in a Virtual Instance
   The live online Magento demo does have some restrictions and resets itself quite often.  To get a hands on look, you can deploy Magento Commerce in a virtual environment.  Here are two options:Jumbox (Requires Subscriber Level) – The JumpBox image can easily be run in VMWare (VMWare server is free), or deployed directly to Amazon EC2.
   http://www.jumpbox.com/app/magento

   VMWare Virtual Appliance – Since JumpBox requires a monthly subscription, I’ve found an alternative.  However I haven’t tested it, and it appears to be user created, so proceed with caution.  It is a virtual appliance that can be run directly in VMWare.
   http://magentodev.blogspot.com/2009/03/magento-vmware-virtual-appliance.html

3. Try Magento on Shared Hosting or in the Cloud
   Hosting plans are cheap enough and many include abilities to easily setup Magento Commerce.  Specifically, I know that BlueHost uses SimpleScripts to handle all aspects of Magento Commerce installation.  You can have a live implementation setup with just a few clicks and a payment of $6.95 / mo.If you are looking to get a deployment up that you can test, push live, and then easily scale, for $149 / mo Rackspace Cloud Sites might be a good option.  Nathan Totten has a good writeup on how to get Magento setup on Rackspace Cloud Sites, which can be (based on his writings) a bit tricky.
4. Test it your way!
   Of course, you always have the ability to download and set it up yourself on your own hardware, shared resources, or virtual environment.  You can find the latest downloadable edition here.  Be sure you have all of the system requirements covered.  This can be easily tested by running the Magento Check script.  Finding the most up to date installation guide seemed to be a bit of a task.  You should check out these helpful forums for the latest information:
   http://www.magentocommerce.com/boards/viewthread/1647/
   http://www.magentocommerce.com/boards/viewforum/9/

Finally a note for merchants who want an affiliate program within.  A free software called Affiliates for All is available at the AFA website.  There has been some discussion about it here with regards to Magento, as well as on the AFA forums.

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