Congratulations! I, too, switched to a laptop a couple of years ago. Last fall, I went one step further and bought a docking station for it. I now have my 22" monitor, wireless keyboard and mouse, and USB peripherals all plugged into the dock. If I want to take the laptop somewhere, I simply snap it out of the dock and it's ready to go. When I get back, I snap it back in and all my "desktop" accessories function again. It's like having the best of both a laptop and a desktop. I'm running XP SP3 at home on the laptop... but when I bought new business computers, I went with WIN7 64 bit. If I had to do it again, I'd have chosen 32 bit, as some software has compatibility issues, even when installed under 32 bit mode.
Enjoy your new "toy"!