I sometimes tell the story of how I was pleased as punch when I finally got access to a punched card machine. Before that, I literally had to fill out the cards using a #2 lead pencil. Being able to just press a key and have the punch card machine "encode" it directly was heaven. I say that to say I hear you, but I just installed a VM for the first time the other day just to play around with it. I've been hearing so many people talking about VM's here (and other places) that I just decided to give it a go. It's never too late if you have a spare machine around. I did it because I had a 16-bit DOS application a client needs that won't run on my Windows 64-bit desktop. So I installed VMWare Workstation, then installed an old copy of Windows XP, then the old DOS application. It worked.
Come on. Jump in. Just do it on a machine that supports VT-x (Intel Virtual Technology extensions) if you can. And one that isn't a production machine. FYI, I've noticed that since installing VMWare Workstation on a desktop, things are a little slower and all my I/O goes through VMWare (it's always there) even if I have no virtual machines running. But that's probably somewhat of a misnomer. What I consider to be my "host OS" (Win 7 x64) is probably now logically really a guest OS on VMWare.
I'm actually considering getting a faster desktop just to run VMWare (or some VM). One really nice thing is being able to run a browser in a VM and blow it away periodically. I currently do this with Sandboxie, but a VM is even better for safe browsing. And since browsing is how seemingly 99% of viruses are spread these days...
Anyway, I don't want to hijack the thread, but I do hope you give VM's a try one day. You don't have to commit to it.. just give it a try. It was less painful than I anticipated.