wanting to learn from your mistakes

okay, cool, i got tn5250 working on two differnet machines now. one machine is 
running windows and the windows verison of tn5250 the other is a linux machine 
running redhat 8.0. the plan i have is as follows. we have five 5250 terminals 
with twinax. these are to be replaced. headquarters wants to replace them with 
thin clients, cost is 350 dollars per machine. each machine will still only be 
able to run a 5250 program but they can be upgraded later to get the internet 
of course that will cost more $$$$ and so we'll never get it. on the other hand 
i can get a 133 pentuim with a 1 or 2 gig harddisk and 64 meg of memory for 
less than 100 dollars, we have old 15 inch montoirs laying around i could use 
that as well but with the price of 17 inch montiors dropping the way they are i 
might buy new ones too.  my question is this, which way should i go, the window 
98 verson seems to work find and so does the linux verison. which is best, 
would love to hear about personal expericences. oh i forgot, the twinax system 
is going away we're using ethernet now with tcpip.