I have seem quiet a few tutorials for using vmware to use windows within Ubuntu,
but i can't understand/get it to work.

Wine doesnt work for some applications.
***1. Does wine work better or worse than Vmware?

I only have Ubuntu on this computer (no duel boot)
***2. Would making a partion for vmware work better?

Ok so I have VMware player which will only open .vmx files.
***3. Where do i get this .vmx file? from converting my winXP CD?

In some tutorials Vmware server was mentioned
***4. Do I need the server or player?

I seem to already have a "windows" folder in my "home folder" but its empty.
I don't know what im doing at all here could someone help me out?

Getting vmware player to work is pretty easy. I take it that you have it installed on your computer. The first thing you need to do after you install it is to run the script vmware-config. This should be located in your path so you just have to type it in. Making a partition for vmware is not needed because the virtual hard disk that it makes is just a file, so it can easily be handled by your existing setup.

You can get a .vmx file from http://www.easyvmx.com. Then when you open player, just direct it to your vmx file. This is like opening a computer with nothing on the hard drive, so you then need to put in your XP disk and install it from within the virtual machine.

You don't need server, player works fine.

Oh, I forgot to mention wine. I think that wine has a harder time making windows apps work. With vmplayer, they always work. The only thing that you have to worry about is the performance in vmplayer is worse than wine, so if you are trying to use really big programs (like games), maybe wine would be a little better choice.

1) Wine is for emulating one program at a time. VMware is for emulating the entire Windows OS and running the programs within that environment. What do you mean "work better?" More reliable? Faster? Easier to configure?

2) Unless you're running VMWare ESX Server (part of Infrastructure, now), you don't need a seperate install for VMware. It will run in your Ubuntu environment.

3) .vmx files are certain, pre-made virtual machine files. Someone with different branch of VMware would need to create one in order to distribute it to you (VMware server may be able to do this, I have no experience with that branch). There may even be an intermediary step necessary between creating a VM on Workstation 5 and distributing it as a .vmx file. Something to check. Also, there are a lot of .vmx files in the VMware community (they're hosted at other sites, but they're linked from VMware's site).

4) If you're just looking to run the pre-made VMs, either will work. What specific features are you looking to do?

Looks like sharkus beat me to providing help. That's definitely one thing I noticed about LQ during my lurking days--the (generally) quick response times.