Windows Licensing

Use your copy of XP home and the license key that came with your laptop.

What the hell does Stalin have to do with MS?

Stalin would have said, "One license key for all!"

M.

You can install your "make specific" XP on ANY computer. I install XP Professional that came on my Dell Inspiron 5150 on my Chembook 2030 and my ASUS z70Va.

All you have to do is go thru the activation bull$hit, it will then instruct you to call a certain 800 number to verify your installation.
You will speak some numbers to a computer. It will process your activation code and deem your installation suspect.

It will then ask you to hold on the line until a friendly customer service rep jumps on the line to assist you.

He/She will ask you for the same info you gave the computer, ask you how many computers is this copy of windows installed on (as long as you say only one, you will be fine. DER! ), and then he/she will thank you for your time and inform you that you activated your copy of windows.

They will then spit out an activation key that you need to enter to fully activate windows.

At this point after you hang up the phone, I strongly suggest you ghost your drive so that if you have to ever re-install your OS, you wouldn't need to go through all this crap again.

Its actually pretty fast, about 15 minutes or so, from beginning to end (depends on when you call, sometimes they come right away on the line, other times you can wait upto 10 minutes but I've never had to wait more than 10 minutes to Micorsofts credit) but its a lot of crap to go through just to re-install an OS.

Also, make sure to request an over the phone activation when you get the activation wizard. If you choose to do it over the internet, you will just get a dialog box that says you can't install this copy of XP on this computer.

Cheers.