First, I want to thank everyone for responding with ideas and suggestion here.
[warning lengthy post]
I've installed kqemu and installed my first VM. I't really quite fun. I went with kqemu, because it's got the acceleration for qemu. Everyone out there who has tested pretty much agree qemu is worthless without it. I am running on a Intel Centrino Core Duo T5300, not VT extensions so kvm is out (damn). This Intel replaces my old Dual Core Athlon64 which did have kvm support. FYI, for those using Intels, just having the right cpu isn't enough, you have to have the right chi[pset and be able to enable VT support from the BIOS. So HP laptops with Intel are going to be mostly out.
I plan on testing this one out for a few weeks, install KDE4 in it, and play some more. Install Windows in it and play briefly (I don't want to leave a 20GB file on my drive for too long).
Then I'm going to remove kqemu and install vmware. Rinse and repeat with some of the others.
So far, here's my take. It's a bit slow starting up, but once up it seems to be not too bad. The Mint installer has a bit of a flaky screen when going from text mode to X, but once it gets over that it displays fine. I also installed the graphical front-end to manage qemu. It has a bug in it. It has an option to create the image files to hold the VM, but it doesn't do it right. I had to open a console and use the command-line tool. Once that was done the gui tool worked fine. Next step setting up networking with it.
This looks like a really useful tool for a testbed. You could back up your entire VM by simply copying the file when it isn't running. Launch you VM and not have to worry about trashing your system. Very cool.
Set up was a breeze, just apt-get install. But I had to compile kqemu. I think I'll also have to add a startup script to create the /dev/kqemu device and modify the boot modules list.
Thanks, Brian