Pre-emptive help

Hello guys, sorry I haven't been on the boards much. I was busy setting things up after I got my notebook and upgrading all of my family's computers to vista, except for one. The oldest and crappiest of our computers is going to be (hopefully) converted into a sever tower. Is there anything that I should be aware of?

See what has happened is that my dad upon receiving a refund on my education from the state (state pays for part of my schooling) has decided to soon purchase a laptop, because since I got one he's "seen the future and it works!" He particularly loves the whole wireless internet, and that I finally about three days ago figured out how to network my printers from my laptop, and that I have also figured out how to distribute files around from my desktop to my notebook. He finds this all "cool" I suppose. He wants to join in on this as well. lol.

Now his computer, the one that runs XP still and has a printer and few other items attached to it, can I configure it to a server solution easily?

 

What do you want it to do? File and printer server? If that's all, then that's easy. How many other computers are going to be connecting to it at one time? XP only allows 10 other computers to connect to it at any one time.

 

four and a server.

meaning if the tower becomes the central server there will be four tops. two laptops and two desktops. on occasion there will be two other laptops. if it doesn't work out I think i may just buy the hp home server.

 

A server doing what?

A. File server
B. Print server
C. Domain controller
D. Database server
E. VPN server
F. Mail server
G. Web server
H. Internet access server
I. Terminal Server
J. Application server

There are many different tasks a server can accomplish.

 

file and print.

 

XP will be fine for that.