I'm not sure if anyone has mentioned this already, but for most applications I've had *much* greater success with Win4Lin (http://www.netraverse.com). Sound, speed, graphics all seem to work better for (most) Windows applications.
Win4Lin is faster, cheaper and suitable for what most necessary-Windows types need. cheers, Matt ps - if this has been brought up and refuted, I'm not interested in yet another VMWare-Win4Lin-Wine fight. :)