A little cooler than before...

I've been playing with that free laptop I got last week. I discovered that the PCMCIA slots on my old laptop are probably NOT dead; the new laptop does the same thing when I plug in my wireless cards; it works only the very first time it's plugged in. Reboot, and it's dead, never to work again unless you restore the entire system to a point before you ever installed, install the drivers and you get one more go.

So I bought an Intel Mini PCI A/G wireless card from eBay for $20. The laptop already had built-in antennas. It works great; I get a better signal than any other wireless device I've used at the corners of the house, and the drivers are simple, straightforward and just work. I've never had a laptop with built-in wireless before, it's kind of cool. Plus, it leaves the PCMCIA slots free.