Although that maybe a more simple route(using windows) it isn't cheap, and I personally wouldn't recommend it if it was free.
I'd personally suggest installing a Linux, or BSD on it. Fedora Linux is usually considered the recommended distro for beginners.
I use Slackware Linux for my main server, and FreeBSD for a very crappy 70mhz computer I'm using as a FTP server.
Fedora is quite intuitive, and there are tons of tutorials for it. Slackware is a little harder, but it includes the server packages that I like, and setup in a stable fashion. Its still pretty easy to install/use, as long as you use the manual you can get off the site(slackware.com). I wouldn't recommend FreeBSD to a beginner, but it is incredibly stable, and once you learn it you can do things really fast and efficiently with it. It also will run well on even very old computers.
Anyway you choose, you can download them all for free off of www.linuxiso.org[/URL]. Burn the .isos onto cds, and then follow the instructions on their websites. I haven't used a current version of Fedora yet, but I do know Slackware asks you what servers it should setup during the install.
For an HTTP server, I recommend Apache(HTTPD). Carefully read the instructions. The configuration is usually pretty painless, as the defaults are all right in most cases. But still, go over them.
[url]http://www.apache.org/[/url]
For a mail server, look into either sendmail, or qmail. Sendmail is included in both, but I'm unsure about qmail.
For FTP, [url]http://pureftpd.org/[/url] has a nice, easy to use, secure server.
Its all totally free, and more stable(no matter what the microsoft sponsored surveys say : ))
If you get a dedicated server, or if you get web hosting from anywhere, it'll be Linux 90% of the time.
There are many places you can get help with setting it up if you need it. linuxquestions.org, is usually a good place to start. And as always, google is your friend.
