well basiclinux wont be able to use most windows modems or a wide range of ethernet cards, so you have to keep that in mind, there's only so much you can fit on a couple floppies, if installed to a hard drive you can add more stuff, its not meant to be permanent really, more like a rescue tool or something to play with and learn with
basiclinux is like having a portable OS that fits in your pocket, you can take it anywhere, turn off the power and its gone, unless installed to a hard drive, it will run eitherway
there's also whats called "live" cd's, which are linux distro's on a CD instead of a floppy, they come with alot more software, look up knoppix on google, they run in RAM too and dont even need a hard drive, just put it in the cdrom drive and let it boot up, they are graphic, come with enough stuff to be like windows really, as far as what they look like on your screen anyway, it doesnt have to be installed either, just let it boot up,but they come with an install to hard drive option if you want to do that
both basiclinux and knoppix are easy ways to give linux a try without installing anything
for your workstation Id get a regular distro and use that instead,just thought i'd show you a couple more options
if you want to see what the different levels of hardware can do, goto the hardware forum, someone asked that question earlier and I posted there about it