I was told these programs might allow me to run Linux and Windows at the same time. Has anyone had an experience with these? If not do you have any suggestions?

Virtual PC is a Microsoft product. I am not sure if anyone in a Linux forum wants to deal with them on purpose. VMware is the industry standard, and their products are relatively easy to set up, whether it is a Windows guest on a Linux host or vice versa. They have a "free" product (free as in beer) called VMware Server that you may want to try out. There is another good product available in both proprietary and open source versions called VirtualBox. The proprietary product is also free (as in beer) and the open source product is free as in beer and free as in speech. In my opinion, the proprietary version is as viable for desktop use as VMware Server. It will also run a Windows guest on a Linux host and vice versa.

I've run Linux in both VMWare and Virtual PC as guests in a Windows host without problems. The Windows host has been able to access several Internet services running in the Linux guest OS.