To add to the other replies yuo have received:
I used to run my laptop with two native partitions one with linux and the other one upgrading win95-win98-WinNT-win2k. This worked very well, and I ran windows under vmware on Linux, and I ran Linux under VMware on WinNT/2k and both combinations at the same time, i.e. I could run windows or Linux as the host OS and the other one as the native OS, and change as I wanted, just by rebooting.

I must admit this was not very easy to set up, but when I finally got it to work, it worked very well.

Unfortunately, the laptop got stolen, and the backup server crashed a few days later, so all my setup is gone.

The stability was super. Never had any problems with anything. Just remember that VMware will equire large amounts of memory. Take what you normally would need, double it and add 20MB. Runs perfectly well on a single CPU machine, or any other number of CPUs. You'll want the workstation version, the others are really very expensive.

VNC is no problem whatsoever. I think the latest versions can be started from a command-line, without requiring X. And automatically starting it when booting should be no big deal to set up.

Basically, I feel VMWare is the best Os-type-of-software since OS/370.

But... without a laptop, I end up using two PCs instead, one with linux and one with windows.... (The linux machine is a pentiom MMX, and both have a screen ersolution of 640x480... guess what's on my present wishlist if I ever get hold of some money... /me hates Temporary layoffs))

Marius (Escort Cab + Mark II)