[ILUG] ntfs / ntfs-3g write + VMWare running Windows under Linux vs. WINE reliability ?

[Jason Vas Dias]

Please can anyone advise - 

I'm about to convert my Dad's Windows machine to run Linux then Windows under VMWare or WINE , 
ie. to dual boot either windows or linux and then be able to run windows under linux (my dad is an
octogenarian novice computer user, who wants to be able to run either Windows-98 MS-Works OR
Windows XP MS-Office, while taking advantage of secure browsing and email under Linux - he already
uses Firefox + Thunderbird for Windows, which constitutes all of his non-document-editor computer usage,
but got burned recently by a windows virus, and wants to be able to access his MS-Works'98 documents, which 
he cannot do under Windows-XP'03 , and be safe from windows viruses ).  So I figured it is best to get him using
firefox + thunderbird for Linux,  and set up access to MS-Office or MS-Works on either his Windows-98 or
Windows-XP disks running under a VMWare player for Linux .

Anyone have any comments / experience with doing the above ?  If so,  I'd be most grateful for any advice the
community could offer .  Should I forget VMware and just use WINE (or whatever it has renamed itself these days) ?

I'd like to create a new partition to house both his "My Documents/owner" home directory and his linux home directory,
 that is writable under both windows and Linux in a normal, safe and reliable way .  Having any other separate home directory
 for linux would just confuse him .

I believe recent ntfs-3G write support is still a bit raw and beta-quality and does not support directory creation / deletion ?

Can anyone confirm / deny that ntfs-3g NTFS write support is full featured and robust enough to support intuitive novice
computer user usage ?

ie. should I make his new home directory partition FAT32 or NTFS ?

Thanks in advance for any replies,

Regards,
Jason Vas Dias<jason.vas.dias at gmail.com>

PS: I'm an experienced software engineer, an ex Red Hat software engineer + package maintainer, 
so I know basically how to repartition the windows disk and install dual boot windows + linux -
I just don't have much experience with recent Linux NTFS write support .