My experience is only with desktops so far although...

I did have an old IBM Thinkpad on the network back when my main machine was a Win 2K operation. Networking was no problem with those older OS. It's the newer ones that can be a bear since MS has plugged several holes in it's Swiss cheese security

I didn't ask; is this XP Pro or XP Home edition you're running?
XP Pro can be a little frustrating to get working in a small network and XP Home sometimes won't work with other machines in small networks.
XP64 may have the same and a few more networking issues that I'm not familiar with.

At any rate, I would think the connection issues shouldn't be any different for desktop or laptop once the network setup is properly installed.

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