Safely view websites that may be harmful

I posted a car on Craigslist the other day and since then I've been getting nothing but scam emails that contain links the people want me to click. I know not to clink the links and that it's a scam, but nonetheless I am still curious as to what these people are up to. Is there a way to safely view a website that I know may be malicious? I know I could create a VM machine but was looking for another method that may be a little quicker than that.

For what it's worth, I'm running XP Pro SP3 and typically use Firefox (3.5.5).

You can use Sandboxie. I'd still be afraid, but only because I've never tried something like that. In theory though everything that a web site did would be completely isolated and undone by just deleting the sandbox. You could also get a text only (like Lynx) browser. You should be able to see enough of the web site to get an idea what they are trying to do.

Boot from a linux live CD and browse the suspect sites from it. The odds are overwhelmingly high that the malware is targeting windows so you shouldn't have anything to worry about.