Have you ever found yourself in urgent need of another Windows box? Or, have you wanted to build a web application on Windows, but without having to buy servers? Or maybe you just want to have a network of Windows machines that you can test your new Server Isolation strategy on? You're in luck! Amazon yesterday launched its new Windows on EC2 service. Inside of five minutes you can be ready to log on to your very own Windows on EC2 instance and get started on all those projects!

EC2 is Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud, a network of virtual servers where you pay only for what you use. Use it for two hours and you get charged for two hours. Use it for a month and you get charged only for a month. It's an eat-all-you-want server where you pay only for what you eat. You can even get it with SQL Server pre-installed.

As if having the ability to build your very own virtual network of Windows computers at minimal cost were not enough, there is even a security whitepaper on how to do it safely. Maybe you will even find some comfort in the familiar name involved in the project?

Read the complete post at http://msinfluentials.com/blogs/jesper/archive/2008/10/24/need-a-spare-windows-box.aspx