I am new to WP and would like to evaluate it for possible use with a site I am now planning. Would a 'free' WP account show me all the features available if I will be running WP on my own host? If not - how can I eval WP (without buying a WP hosting plan)?
thanks
A free wordpress.COM account can give you an idea - but no, it is not as customizable as the selfhosted version.
You can always install XAMPP on your box and have a local installation of WP for testing.
see mroe: http://codex.wordpress.org/Getting_Started_with_WordPress#Installation