Might make resale value a bit better though, having the disks. But I don't anticipate that as a need at the moment.
Nor, as I play with this more and more, do I see a time where I will spend significant time in the XP environment. Haven't tested everything (cd burning, kvm setup)..but this is the first machine that I've had gnome on that didn't make me want to punch the screen because of memory issues and general hogginess.
Still going to install xfce because I simply like it better.
Have a new battery on order and looking on ebay for a slim dock extra to make this a 10-12 hour machine on batteries and I think I may be loving life.