The 2010 Information Worker Demonstration and Evaluation Virtual Machine is the easiest way to evaluate SharePoint development. The VM comes complete with an installed, working copy of SharePoint 2010, Visual Studio, Office 2010, and much, much more. The installation instructions mention that you can connect the virtual machine to the internet and activate it for 180 days. However, it had been long ago enough since I last performed this process that I had forgotten a couple of details, and had one of those scratching-my-head experiences, so I’m noting the steps to do this. Actually, I had intended to write this info down the last time I forgot how to activate the VM, but I neglected to, and so was doomed to repeat my experience. While I am documenting the key points on activating, I’m also going to note some of my favorite ways to configure these machines – my personal preferences. 1. Enable virtualization technology in the BIOS. Sometimes the setting can be difficult to find – it was under Security on one of my desktop machines. On my Lenovo laptop, it is pretty obvious.