@scotth nothing wrong with the specs of that system, perfect for learning with to be honest.
Don't overthink VDI, it's really just a collection of VM's with management tools for automatically creating machines from base images, load balancing, gateway management etc.
Microsoft have their solution built into windows server called Remote Desktop Services, Citrix have their solution which adds more functionality on top of this and use a different connection protocol called ICA which uses less resources than RDP. VMware have their solution called VMware Horizon View.
I don't use VDI per say, I use session based desktops (shared Desktop) and would recommend using this for most scenarios, VDI is expensive, needs fast storage and needs to be setup and planned correctly. I've seen a company use a VDI solution that was crap to use due to the SAN being flakey and the environment not being setup correctly. VDI is excellent if used in the correct manner and for the correct purpose though.
There are trials you can use, download windows server evaluation and start off with RDS and see how you get on, I believe Citrix and VMware have trials for their products as well.