In my humble opinion... VirtualPC is great!
You may try other things, but if there is any liklihood that you'll end up with VirtualPC, then I'd reccomend you buy it today.
Tomorrow it will not be an issue of who's pocked your VirtualPC $ goes into... Do you really think Microsoft is going to continue making the Mac verion of this product? Heck NO! (Unless Steve Jobs gets off his duff and makes another one of those $multi-million deals with M$ like he did with Office.)
Buy virtual PC today while you still can.
(For anyone who did not realize, Microsoft just bought Connectix...)