If you have 3rd party programs that you use...you could set up things the way I have...one Windows and one Linux. It's a pretty big project and you need room for an additional PC. Total cost would be about $150 for the PC and the switching system.
But, you should be OK with Windows 7 as far as security concerns. We'll tawk.
I only have to maintain and upgrade one workstation. Since Windows only sees the virtual hardware, I can upgrade my physical hardware without having to get Microsoft's permission.
By utilizing a virtual network connection between the Linux host and the Windows VM, they can share network resources yet the Windows VM is completely isolated from my physical LAN. Windows has no ability to phone home for "upgrades", and is not exposed to remote attacks.
I haven't really needed Windows for much during the past decade, but having the VM available has proven useful on occasion. The performance of the Win7 VM is not bad at all, and most people would never know that it's not running on physical hardware.
I haven't attempted to run WINE in years, so I'm sure it has improved greatly. However, success with Windows apps is almost certainly going to be more likely when running them on a real Windows OS -- even if that OS is running on virtual hardware. I guess WINE will support newer Windows apps in the future, as my Win7 VM will eventually become obsolete, but I expect to be finished with Windows entirely by then.
As an added bonus, once you have the virtual host running, it is painless to install and test other operating systems. I have 32-bit and 64-bit versions of several Linux distros running, as well as BSD and Win7. In some cases, I have even been able to download pre-configured VM images which required no installation -- simply download the image and boot it up in a window.
A VM using VirtualBox or VMWare would be better than a separate PC. That's what I do, and it works great. I keep about 8 different VMs around for different purposes.