<< I'm sure you paid for it not knowing what you were going to do with it...
You should not make those assumptions Viper, they only make you look condescending. I have Win-2000 Pro, Win-2000 Server, and Win-2000 Advanced Server. I got all three (full versions) at the same time from Microsoft for about $100.00 about a year and a half ago. They are all legit and MS knows I have them. >>
It's called sarcasm, I'm his roomate and I run the server. I work with a non-profit and it was (if I remember correctly) $100-120.
If you want to analize his statement it's kind of like someone saying they got a new expensive car that they know nothing about, and than joking about how a salesman could have ripped them off...
<< Now that I have this OS installed on one of my systems, what can I do with it? What can I serve? >>
I know you only have 4 machines, but if you really wanted you could setup a domain server and have the machines logging into a domain. We set up ours this way simply because it makes sharing networked resources easier (That and XP Pro runs much better on a domain, it gives you the ctrl+alt+del logins/locks, doesnt have as much annoying stuff).
The other big differance that nobody has mentioned is that if you were using Win 2K Pro it will only allow for 10 connections at any one point in time. If you were pulling multiple files off a fileshare from all 4 machines you could get close to going over that (because windows will open the next connection before it completely closes the 1st.).
It's stable too (although so is 2K, especially if you are using it to *just* run services, like a server usually does). Although MS had that 99.999% uptime marketing a while back I've never had mine up for more than about 45 days or so because MS keeps comming up with updates that make me restart (and if they dont I get virus updates that do).
Enjoy,
-Spy