Re: Windows XP for Laptop PC
A couple questions...
If you got the laptop from work to be used at home, does your employer retain an interest in it? That is, might he ever want it back? Does your employer still consider it a company PC or did he give it away / sell it to get rid of it? If it's still a company PC (laptop), then check with your IT department before you install anything on it.
From my viewpoint, that PC is still relatively new -- most people would consider my PC's to be boat anchors, but they still do everything I want. You should be able to run almost any OS on it (well, maybe not WinVista). Get the highest level OS you can (like XP Pro or Media Center if the PC has the hardware).
But an even greater question -- why do you want to do this?
If it's to be able to connect to work again, the issue is not the OS but some other networking connection, setting, or firewall. Your IT department should help you to reconnect.
If you have no interest or need to connect to work, does it meet your needs otherwise? Why change the OS? If it's just because you think it would be neat and want to, ok. But you really shouldn't have to. If there's some glitch in the system, that can be addressed short of an OS change.
Each step up in Microsloth's Windoze steps requires huge steps in hardware capability. If it's currently running W2K, I'd stay with it. It might be a bit slower than XP to boot, but it's still a good OS. (And who ever would have thought we'd think of W2K as sleek?).