System Restore 1837
In regards to the actual question asked: I don't think you can use system restore the way you are asking. Even if you could (and if...
tom, if they are retail copies (not oem which came with a new computer purchase) then my understanding is that they can be installed on any machine as long as it is not on any other. in other words you can freely move a retail copy of xp from one machine to another; you just can't have it on multiple machine. the oem license is sold for use only be used with the computer it came with. but in my opinion what they mean by "the computer" is completely ambiguous (the case, the processor, the motherboard, the memory, etc... and when you upgrade any or all of these parts do you have to move the xp license with the old parts or use it with the new upgraded parts)... i am not a pirate looking to rip off software developers, i am just a consumer that doesn't care to be ripped off by them.
I'm aware of all that except the no information by phone part. Still, it seems asinine for them...
op, i think that for about $75 per machine to get xp pro pre-installed would have been the best way to save money... reloading the os or even cloning it to another machine will certainly take some time, and time is money. but given where you are (with legitimate retail xp pro licenses in hand) i think the simplest thing to do would be to purchase a 2.5" to 3.5" ide adapter (about $5) or a 2.5" external usb drive cage (about $30) and clone the drive with the xp pro image to the other new drives via a desktop computer. actually with two of the 2.5" to 3.5" adapters you can install the source and destination laptop drives in a desktop and then use a free hard disk utility like maxtor's maxblast to clone them. alternatively you could also just install the oem copy of xp pro from scratch on the two new xp home laptops using the cd from the new xp pro machine. this will not require you to activate xp, however it is a oem edition and so your retail edition windows xp product code will not activate them should you ever be challenged to do so. you could also do this with ghost or parbreastion magic but you have to buy those (and you didn't say you had them) and spending money on spending time juggling the operating system around is not exactly saving you money (or time).