Drupal user/admin question

[Patton Echols]

at some point I will need to join a drupal group if I pursue it as a 
CMS. Hope I can get some insights as i attempt some test work.

First is a really simple noob question.

The documentation says that installation starts by unzipping the tarball 
into the web root of the server (Along with setting up a DB and other 
things). There are also comments about, "if there will be other 
installations" that I didn't quite follow.

Question: Instead of the web root, I'd like to drop into 
webroot/drulaptest/ and point browsers there. I understand I could "just 
try it" ™ but I don't want to break something else. Do any of the drupal 
administrators / users on the list know if this would be a problem?

Thanks for thoughts