2008 network

Hey everyone,
Just wondering if there are any sys admins out there that could help me. I work at a place with 8 2000 servers and about 65 workstations. Not huge but the owner wants me to look into upgrading. The network here is old and relatively unstable, so I am wondering if anyone could give me an idea of how much $ my boss would be looking at. Also, since there is no direct upgrade path for 2008 from 2000, what would be the best method for transferring all the information from what we have now to what we would have?
Any help is appreciated, Thanks!

Has anyone here worked with server '08?
I was also wondering which version of server would be best for our circumstances?
Thanks in advance for any help or feedback.

That is a big open ended question that poses a lot of other questions. Am I correct in assuming that you have a domain setup? I am not super familiar with 2008 since I have been focusing on finishing up my 2003 exams (I fell a little behind). The first thing to do is figure out why things are unstable. Don't assume it is the server and workstation OS is old that is lending to instability. If your looking to upgrade just to get current great! 2008 has been out long enough to get out the worst of the issues. So it is simply a matter of picking the versions that best fit your needs. Unless you are running a very simple network Enterprise edition might be best. Don't forget to add in the cost of all of the new licenses, terminal services (if you use it), exchange, sql and anything else you use will need to be upgraded along with it. Remember to that unless your servers were really good then they will probably not have enough horsepower to run 2008 smoothly. Switch to XP if you can win7 if you can't since 2000 pro will be out of support soon enough. It might be time to look into gigabit ethernet if you can afford the cost as well to expand the bandwidth available.

So I would say look for your weak links (hardware, network components, ect) for the quick easy fix. Going to 2008 server and xp or win7 for the workstations would be very costly and would depend on the other parts of the server/domain setup you have.

just some food for thought!!

Just to add to the topic above this.

I would start looking at the network topology and the equipment used.

If you are using a Hub then you should replace it with a switch, because a hub sends a broadcast message out to all computers on the network causing a network based denial of service. A switch provides much better traffic routing then a hub due to its way of handling packets and what not.

I would then look at your cabling, and see if any ends are broken/bent or if any link in the network has twists or bends.

If you do the above and you are still slow and sluggish then look at the traffic coming out of the network and prevent that sort of traffic at the firewall, and limit people's access to streaming media.

Also can you provide the speed of your network?

Is it all 10BaseT, 100Base-T Half Duplex, 100BaseT Full Duplex?