XAMPP

From the site

XAMPP is an easy to install Apache distribution containing MySQL, PHP and Perl. XAMPP is really very easy to install and to use - just download, extract and start.

I know the amount of time and understanding neded to install all the OpenSource Apps, and then make them work properly with each other. The configuration does take time. I stumbled upon this peice of software just now. I downloaded the windows installer version and installed it. There's an integrated control panel for starting/stopping Apache, MySQL, FileZilla FTP server and Mercury Mail server. It's fairly straight forward.

The StartMenu programs for XAMPP are start/stop XAMPP Services and also a link to the Apache htdocs folder. MySQL 4.1.12 is already started without any worries. Wow! Great work.
And after installation and starting the XAMPP services through control panel, there's also a home page with great tools like: phpMyAdmin(for MySQL administration), Webalizer (Webtraffic analysis), PHP Switch ( for switching betwenn PHP 4 / PHP 5).

All in all a very good tool.

LAMP has always been one of the best platform for web-application development, other than Java. And major websites like Yahoo!(PHP) and Google(mostly Python) use this as the preferred platform.