For field recording laptops (windows XP, and using edirol's FA-101 to capture) is there a preferred program for capture (ie. wavelab, goldwave, audition, audacity, etc.), and if so why. Or is it simply the case that anyone will do for indie film, doc, and small band recordings

Well...I'm a Vegas and Sound Forge freak. I've done very, very well with them. From Steven Seagal location work to BB King, to 3 Tenors, Mormon Tab Choir for the Olympics....my laptop has been my recording station almost exclusively for the past 5 years.
http://m-audio.com/artists/en_us/DouglasSpottedEagle.html

ProTools isn't bad, but it's just a pig on the processor in the Windows world.

With Vegas, I've successfully recorded 24 tracks in the field on multiple occasions. Until about 2 years ago, I still used DA-88's fed from the same inputs, but now I no longer do, and my FedEx account is much lighter now that I'm not flying a 16space rack everywhere I go.

Spot, sound forge I understand...but vegas. I have used it in the past for video editing, but in this case I will want to avoid things such as clipped sound and similar capturing probems. Given that, however, I don't don't doubt that what you are saying is true, but for someone with less expertise than yourself in the use of clean audio capture, will vegas provide me with enough coverage.

If you are capturing clipped audio in Vegas, you're capturing clipped audio in everything else. Whatever your card puts out, that's what Vegas records. Vegas is trimmable, some DAWs aren't on input. It's all up to your card, not the software.