One other thing I've done there is to run ubuntu on the laptop/desktop and then run Windows in a virtual machine. Two useful sites for doing that setup are http://www.vmware.com to download their free player and http://www.easyvmx.com to be able to create a virtual machine. Once you've created a virtual machine, power it up and place the windows install disks on a CD drive and boot from those disks to install into the virtual machine. // I haven't done that on a netbook[*] but ran my work laptop that way for many years and was able to have both coexist at the same time.
[*] Not quite true, I also have a Acer netbook with Windows installed and I have a virtual machine installed there running ubuntu 9.04.