I don't know if it well known that you can easily make some hand-on experience with Check Point's products without to have extra hardware at all; simply using your good'ol PC.
Anyway I suggest to you to download the virtualization tools of VMWare and the already prepared Check Point appliance from VMWare's web site:
VMWare Player:
http://www.vmware.com/products/player/ It's free and you can use it to "play" already generated virtual appliances.
VMWare Server:
http://www.vmware.com/products/server/ It's free and you can use it to "play" already generated virtual appliances, or
to install from scratch new virtual appliances. For example I use it to install from scratch a Windows 2003 Standard Server with AD and Sofaware SMP without any problem and 100% OK.
VMWare Appliances:
http://www.vmware.com/vmtn/appliances/ A list of already prepared and tested virtual appliances. Here is the Check Point NGX R60A on SPLAT:
http://www.vmware.com/vmtn/appliance...heckpoint.html.
I have a 2,8 GHz Pentium with 1GB RAM and I can run at least three virtual appliances at the same time.
I hope this will be useful to you too.
Ciao
PDPITA