Dude, I'm getting a Dell?

I have a temporary need (two, three months) for a PC for a project I’m working on. (There are five Macs in my house and one PC but it’s in the basement and runs Windows 98, ugh.) It’s an old Pentium Pro, so I don’t even know if I should install XP on it (probably not!). I had to buy XP and put it on a borrowed Dell to capture the PC-related screenshots in my Dreamweaver book.
Now once again I need a PC for testing stuff, so I’m stringing a very long ethernet cable down through the laundry chute to the basement, where I have a second hub (amidst the detritus from my old office in downtown Oakland) I can plug into it and put the PC and Mac down there online (I use a Linksys router to share the DSL connection and an Airport base station to put B and my laptops online).
If it all works and the old PC can handle the testing load, I’m cool. If not, I may be looking to borrow someone’s spare laptop for a few months.