If you're planning on installing an OS over a network, would it not be a good idea to use an OS that has been designed to be installed that way?
Gentoo is a good linux example, but I personally prefer NetBSD, get yourself a nice new pack of floppies, format two of them, get the NetBSD boot disk images and rawwrite (windows) or DD to put them on the disks, then insert into the laptop (whilst its connected to the network) and follow the reletively straight forward instructions as they come up. You won't regret it (once you've got it all in place).
