Well in short, the Virus is probably the best overall trance synth on the market. If I were playing on stage, its the board I would want under me.
But, what I think you will want to do, ultimately is MAKE TRANCE music.. right? This means in order to get your fix you will have to be able to make an entire MP3, put on your iPod, share with friends or on myspace, etc. If that's not your goal right now, I'm guessing it will be within the first 3 months of your new music making hobby. I could be totally wrong and you just want to play some Armin Van Buuren on your stereo and play a single sound along with it? If that's the case the Virus is overkill for your needs. But even if you start at that level you will probably want to take it to the next level.
As far as terms you were unfamiliar with, DAW = digital audio workstation (music making software package) and VST is simply a software synth standard. You can buy (and download free) a wide variety of software synthesizers and control them with a single MIDI keyboard. The keyboard itself does not need to contain sounds, the sounds can play through your DAW software using your computer as the sound creation engine.
The reason I'm bringing all this up is that at some point you will discover you need drums to do trance, and the Virus or any other synth is not going to give you good drums, you need samples for that. You also need a way to arrange chord progressions. The Virus cannot do that, you need a sequencer for that. There are a number of other reasons why the Virus is an awesome synth to have in the trance making arsenal, but it cannot be your only tool. I think the same would be true if you bought the Roland Gaia, which is probably decent for the price but no where close to being in the league of the Virus.
So, here is my recommendation to you. Take a couple of hundred dollars of your budget and buy a decent MIDI keyboard controller. The one I use is Novation Remote but there are plenty of choices out there. Now, bank the rest of the money and go to
http://flstudio.image-line.com/ and download the FLStudio demo. It is full featured, you just won't be able to save projects. Use that to learn how to make music -- there is a lot to learn but its not like school work, the entire journey will be fun. The FLStudio demo has enough synths built in to keep you quite busy. Then, branch out and buy some top quality synths like Zebra, Sylenth1. I highly recommend Oresus because its only $45 and I swear sometimes I get better trance sounds out of it than I did the Ti2 Desktop. At some point you may want to learn another DAW besides FLStudio, like Ableton Live, Cubase or Sonar. Or maybe you are at a point with FLStudio that you want to buy the software -- it's only a few hundred bucks, is probably one of the better DAWs out there for making trance or electro, and you get lifetime upgrades for free which is unbeatable.
Then, at some point start adding hardware synths like a Virus, which will give you a deep appreciation for the workflow simplicity a pure software environment provides, and make you wonder what you did with your spare time now that you're spending all your time trying to get your hardware gear working and in sync
I'm not saying that's the right approach for everyone, I just think what I know about your situation thus far it might be a better path for you to head toward making real trance than spending your budget on a single used Virus.
To answer your original question, yes the Virus is good for trance; it's just that its best added after you've got some of the other essentials covered.