It's all good & fine to keep XP around for legacy reasons, either in a VM or as a dual boot option, but there are numerous licensing pit-fall's involved. Focus on the (g)Linux (please)

If you want a windoze OS, the simplest is really to go to TradeMe, and get an old busted machine. Use the rest for spares, or another home linux server (IPCop firewall? mythbuntu? torrentflux? NAS/RAS?).
That way windows will basically cost you the price of shipping. (or you can be sneaky & try to lay your hands on a MSDN version; 2k is still the best)

Which is still probably a violation of the license. Which was the point of the entire thread. (It's also recommended that Free Software advocates avoid derogatory terms like 'Windoze' - see also http://www.wlug.org.nz/archive/mailing-list-aup.txt)

Toronto has a project called TorCamp, a variation of the BarCamp theme, which is basically a mailing list for techies. I've always thought NZ needed something similar, so you could talk about Windows without offending people!

Craig