Virtual is the way to go. No OS can to be everything to everyone. When I switched from DOS and Win3.11 to Windows 95 there were tradeoffs, but overall Windows 95 was better, but a bit slower. It helped a lot that I could still run my essential DOS software (mainly WP5.1) in a command prompt window. The situation is the same today. Overall, Linux is better but there are still some things people need to use in Windows.

I love that I can backup virtual drives like regular files. I have a backup virtual drive on my network share (my work desktop) and a copy that I play with on my laptop. Since VMWare lets me grow the drives as needed and/or stores the drive data as files no larger than 2 gig I can copy them to DVDs or to my external hard drive easily. If the computer running the virtual drive ever crashes I can use any other computer and free VMWare software to run the drive from one of my backups. It's as simple as copy and paste to another host computer.  I can delete all traces of my VM from the host computer when I'm done.

8 gigabyte USB keychain drives are now available.  This is more than enough space to house a Windows virtual drive and the necessary VMWare Player.  An external hard drive is another great storage option.  An 80 gig external HD could easily keep a few virtual drives and backups.  But it's not as portable as the more compact USB drive.

IMO everyone should learn how to work with VMs, even those who only use Windows. Think of them as a backup copy of your OS that you can take with you and run from anywhere without affecting the host system.