About to go back to windows host -- need advice

I recently converted my laptop from dual-boot to linux-only, and made the windows portion a VMWare guest.

For the most part, things worked ok -- with the following exceptions:
   o   VMWare suspend is slower than a VMWare reboot
   o   Even though I limited the session to 768mb, it seems to eat more and
        more resources as it runs, requiring frequent vmware restarts.
   o   This eventually makes the host slow, which requires linux reboots.
   o   One of the apps I needed, the Cisco IP Phone, does not work under vmware,
        so now I have to use Skype -- which I have to pay for.
   o   My Video Chipset (FireGL 3200) is not supported by the current accelerated drivers, so gaming is out.
   o  And, power management.  I've set linux to drop the cpu speed when it gets hot -- but it still seems to burn WAY more power than windows, cooking my legs too often.

So -- I'm considering going a different direction.  I still don't want dual boot -- there are several times when having access to both windows and linux at the same time is very useful.  So, I'm considering using XP as the *Host* os, and running Linux in a VMware session.  So -- this generates some questions:
   o   I *assume* that Linux will be WAY more friendly in a vmware session than windows -- is this a correct assumption?
   o   Is VMWare the best thing to use here?  I know Linux is pretty happy in other virtualizers -- which one works best with windows as a host?  Before anyone starts talking about *real* virtualizers -- keep in mind I have a Pentium M, w/o the VT stuff -- So -- Xen is out.
   o   And, finally -- a windows partition thingie question.  I physically switched disks when I did this (after using VMWare converter to make my vmware drive).   I still have the old partition.  Is there an easy way to convert a small partition on one disk to a larger partition on another disk?

Thanks in advance,


-Dave


--
David Frascone

Originality is the art of concealing your sources.