[plug] vmware, wine, boch, win4lin ...

[BillK]

I have just received a message from vmware saying they are discontinuing
their current home/hobbyist pricing.  I am currently using a licenced
version of vmware 1.something - does what I want but a bit sloooow. 
Does anyone who has used both like to comment on whether its worth
nearly $A200 to upgrade, taking into account speed, features and
resource usage within the host machine?  It appears it will be nearly
$A600 after the changes, and because their version 2 has been out
awhile, they may be about to release version 3, leaving me with an about
to be superceeded product!  Its critical that I have access to windows,
and vmware is a great solution, but I think they have got a bit gready
(overpriced) with having little competition.  Do I make the move now at
the current price, or keep the current version and keep a look out for
alternatives.  At some point, what I have will become too old to be
viable.

win4lin is not a viable alternative as I have discovered some software
which will not run on it (and as luck would have it, they are the
packages what I would really like to use with it!).  Some years ago, I
tried boch, but it was in quite a primative state (barely
usable/experimental) compared to vmware at the time.  A message on one
of the Mandrake lists mentioned some features it now has (i.e., supports
up to pentium class software now) - has anyone had a look at this
recently?

wine is a possibility, I have seen a number of people on various lists
saying they have MSoffice installed, but the few attempts I have made so
far stop quite early - has anyone at plug succeeded?

BillK