Ubuntu 12.10 runs Wine impressively fast. I have UT3 and Office 2011 running via Wine.
There are options though. Libre Office has a megaton of functionality while being both free and lightweight.
RE: Wine. Codeweavers had another free CrossOver giveaway a couple of weeks ago. I haven’t run Wine proper in 5 years or so.
Wine will NOT work on this system. So you can’t run Windows applications directly - wine depends on the X86 instruction set on the processor it is running on.
There ARE emulators like Bochs - but that isn’t what going to be quick.