Thanks to a posting on Patrick Klaassen's weblog, I found a site that offered a SAKAI testdrive... Of course, curious as ever I gave it a try. It was interesting to see SAKAI a year on. This site was showing off 2.1 (December 2005 release).

On the one hand hand it was reassuring to see how straightforward it has become. Buttons down the side which do exactly what you expect them to do. Everything is pretty obvious. They have not yet wandered into a wilderness of flexibility. It is also obviously been built by a few technical minds, with great attention placed on for example webdav and mailing lists.

On the other hand, it is a VLE. No more, no less. You can share the odd stuff, but it is still very teacher oriented. It does not (yet) contain the public facilities which allow students and staff to share knowledge and experiences. I know there are some initiatives along these lines and I am quite curious how separate or how integrated these more public tools will be integrated in SAKAI...

You can find the site at:
http://www.sakaitestdrive.com