Update on VMs under Linux?

[vodhner at cox.net]

Tired of dual booting.  How hard is it, nowadays, to do the following:

1. Run XP in some sort of emulation or virtual machine under Linux, for light use (mostly MS Word 97).

2. Have it able to access *existing* NTFS and FAT32 volumes on the same box without much finagling?  I've got a fair amount of resources that I use from both Linux and Windows.

3. Have other VMs for use on occasion to tinker with alternative Linux distros?  And have them able to access my main Linux / FAT32 / NTFS files?

I am willing to pay some money for software to avoid having another box.

I have a 1.3 GHz Athlon cpu and 0.5 GB of memory.  I'm not too particular about performance, especially on the Windows side.

I'm also interested in possible virtual solutions at work, to allow isolated instances inside a single Linux box for tinkering.  Would be cool to run Solaris 10 under Linux too, since our production shop is mostly Solaris 10.  Once again, VM performance would not be an issue for this purpose.

Thanks,

Vic