VMWare or VirtualPC?

I want to bring up a Linux box soon. I still have it on my old Gateway laptop, but the power connector on it is flakey and the battery doesn't hold a charge, so it has an annoying tendency to just shut down without warning. I don't want to bring in any new hardware, and I don't want to do a dual-boot configuration either. That means I need a virtual machine configuration. VMWare is the product that I had thought had the best reputation as a stable VM environment for WIndows and Linux, but I asked a few of my friends and they all seem to be running Connectix's Virtual PC -- and they like it! Microsoft bought Virtual PC a few months ago, and well.... I'm not sure if that bodes well or not for its Linux support in the future. On the other hand, it may end up being included in the Microsoft Action Pack license set, and that would be cool. I don't, however, want to wait for Microsoft to decide what they're going to do with it. So, I'm wondering... have any of you bloggers/readers out there worked with either VMWare or Virtual PC, or better yet both? And what are your impressions? Which one is better for hosting a Linux virtual machine on a Windows host machine?