Virtualizing desktop PC's

I have an idea and I would like to know just how feasible it is.

As we all know if a component other than the hard drive fails in a Windows PC we cant just pull the hard drive, stick it in another box and happily reboot and carry on unless the hardware is incredibly similar between the two machines. However with Virtual PC's the hardware is virtual and therefore consistent.

Would it be possible to take a chassis, install a skinny OS that supports virtualization (some kind of Linux most likely) then install a Virtual PC image of a Windows XP/Vista or 7 on what is now a Linux box. The idea being that eventaully all the PC's would be replaced by Linux boxes or converted to Linux boxes and each box would run a Virtual Windows PC.

Potentially we could house more than one PC on a Linux box but for now I'm only looking at a single PC per box. This way if hardware fails I can take last nights image of the virtual PC and simply mount it on a another linux box, even one thats being used by someone else and just connect via a remote desktop client, quick and easy disaster recovery right there.

What kind of performance could I expect if I set systems up in this way? By dedicating all available resources to the virtual PC would it perform at a level equal to that of a Windows PC installed directly on the same physical hardware or what would the losses be, 10%, 50% etc?

And while on the subject of virtualization, would it be a good idea to have a Virtualization section on the forum?