Oh maybe worth saying was the laptop has W2K on it, XP would need a bit more memory I would think.
As for small PCs, I use the Via Pico on my lathe and mill, its (or was, not sure if it still is) the smallest mobo you could buy, it measures 100mm x 72mm and is not much bigger than the smoothstepper itself. Its a 1Gig embedded CPU and I have 1 Gig memory on them. Below is a pic of the one in the mills cabinet, arrow pointing to mobo and SS.
Hood