Here's what I did: I've been running cross platform applications for some time now on the old Windows 2000 machine (OpenOffice, Firefox, Thunderbird, etc.). Just last week the thing finally died. I swapped in a machine I'd previously set up running PCLinuxOS (I've never liked Ubuntu), running the same apps. The family barely noticed the change.
Is this PC connected to a peer network? Is it connected to a PC with XP Home Edition? If so, how serious was getting the PC's to handshake?
I'll look into PCLinuxOS. But would appreciate any input you have on the above, if possible.