Yeah, the old examples included with VirtualWire needed to be changed to work correctly, it's been some time.. but you can download the updated library, and use the examples included.
http://www.open.com.au/mikem/arduino/
1.5 is the most recent version, and right below that is the PDF which explains how to use the library.
After you extract the libraries to their destination, close the Arduino program, open it back up and goto File, Examples, Virtual Wire and use the Transmitter and the Receiver examples, just tested with 434mhz pair from Seeedstudio and works fine.
Best of luck!